It was very extraordinary that America found little fault with France, who first commenced the general blockade by the issue of her Milan decrees, and who confiscated all the United States’ vessels that were captured by her men-of-war or privateers with British colonial or other produce on board, coming directly or indirectly from any port of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and her colonies. Had they merely touched or been driven by stress of weather into an English port, or even boarded by a British cruiser, it was sufficient to condemn them as lawful prizes in a French Court of Admiralty, when met at sea by French armed vessels, and detained. England waited with great patience, thinking that all the neutral powers, but above all America, would protest against the measure, and join her who was fighting for the liberties of all the world against the iron grasp of Bonaparte, and his intended universal dominion. The United States, on the contrary, put up with the seizure of their vessels by France, and when Great Britain was obliged, after the greatest forbearance, to declare the whole coast of France and her allies in a state of blockade--which she had the means of doing, having more than one thousand men-of-war of different sizes at sea or in commission, ready effectually to carry this measure into operation--they grew outrageous because she would not permit them to be our secret enemy, and carry the trade of France in their ships, under the new maritime law they proposed, viz., that a neutral ship and flag were to make an enemy’s cargo neutral also. The above was one of the causes that led to the war. Impressment of seamen or sailors out of their vessels is another source of complaint against this country. To this latter act England was driven by the conduct of citizens of the United States, decoying men to desert whenever any of our ships, whether men-of-war or merchant vessels, put into their harbours. The enticing our seamen away to man their vessels naturally made us search for British subjects whenever British men-of-war boarded any of our ships, whether at sea or in foreign parts, particularly when we knew the easy method by which English subjects were naturalised and gained American protections.