The Americans, unwilling to go to war with two such powerful states, were yet resolved not to submit to the tyranny of either; but the injustice of the English government was the most direct, and extended in its operations, and it was rendered infinitely more bitter by the violence used towards the seamen of the United States: not less than six thousand sailors, it was said, were taken from merchant vessels on the high seas, and forced to serve in the British men-of-war. Wherefore, after first passing retaliatory, or rather warning acts, called the non-intercourse, non-importation, and embargo acts, the Americans finally declared war, at the moment when the British government, alarmed at the consequences of their own injustice, had just rescinded the orders in council. The immediate effects of these proceedings on the contest in the Peninsula, shall be noticed in another place, but the ultimate effects on England’s prosperity have not yet been unfolded. The struggle prematurely told the secret of American strength, and it has drawn the attention of the world to a people, who, notwithstanding the curse of black slavery which clings to them, adding the most horrible ferocity to the peculiar baseness of their mercantile spirit, and rendering their republican vanity ridiculous, do in their general government uphold civil institutions, which have startled the crazy despotisms of Europe. [Sidenote: April.] _Political state of Spain._—Bad government is more hurtful than direct war; the ravages of the last are soon repaired, and the public mind is often purified, and advanced, by the trial of adversity, but the evils, springing from the former, seem interminable. In the Isla de Leon the unseemly currents of folly, although less raging than before, continued to break open new channels and yet abandoned none of the old. The intrigues of the princess Carlotta were unremitted, and though the danger of provoking the populace of Cadiz, restrained and frightened her advocates in the Cortez, she opposed the English diplomacy, with reiterated, and not quite unfounded accusations, that the revolt of the colonies was being perfidiously fostered by Great Britain:—a charge well calculated to lower the influence of England, especially in regard to the scheme of mediation, which being revived in April by lord Castlereagh, was received by the Spaniards with outward coldness, and a secret resolution to reject it altogether; nor were they in any want of reasons to justify their proceedings.