It was long seen by those who chose to make use of their senses that the disputes between the two countries must end in a rupture; and that the American Government were determined to side with France, and pick a quarrel with us, and that a war was inevitable. They knew that the whole attention of the British Government was taken up by the great struggle in Europe, and therefore few, if any, troops could be spared from the great theatre of war on the Peninsula; they considered this the time therefore to demand new maritime law. The right of search (which for ages had been the acknowledged or assumed law of all European belligerent nations), for enemies’ merchandize carried in neutral vessels, America was determined to oppose. Instigated by intrigues, and offers of all kinds, made by French emissaries sent for that purpose, Bonaparte found his Milan decrees, declaring the whole coasts of Great Britain and her extensive colonies in the four quarters of the world in a state of blockade, to be of no use without a navy to support it, and not having one that dared show its face upon the ocean, had no means to carry his decrees into execution. His eagle eye at once saw that by making a tool of the United States, and embroiling them with England, he might make a great diversion in his favour. He, therefore, induced their cabinets to enter into his plans, backed, it was said, “_by good, weighty, golden reasons_, and insisted upon a new maritime law,” which would strike a death blow at our dominion of the sea, and at once evade all blockade. The law I allude to was, that the neutral flag or vessel should permit the ship wearing it to carry the cargo of an enemy free of capture from the other belligerent, who met it on the sea or elsewhere.