Notwithstanding the benefits received by the New England states from the Union, the first proposition for its dissolution came from those states when the country was engaged in a foreign war--the war of 1812 with Great Britain--because that war was caused by a temporary suspension of their commerce. Most of these states refused to permit their militia to be marched beyond their limits for the common defence and the question of a separate peace with the public enemy was mooted, notwithstanding the fact that the war had been undertaken in defence of commercial rights in which New England was principally interested. Such was the spirit manifested in that section that the British government in declaring a blockade for the coast of the United States, for some time exempted the New England coast from that blockade and did not invade those states. Upon the passage of an act for a general embargo in 1814, so as to put a stop to the contraband trade from New England, the Massachusetts legislature was flooded with petitions for redress and protection against the act of the Federal government in enforcing the embargo, and a committee to which the petitions were referred, made a report in which the following views, among others, were expressed: "The sovereignty reserved to the states, was reserved to protect the citizens from acts of violence by the United States, as well as for the purposes of domestic regulation. We spurn the idea that the free, sovereign and independent State of Massachusetts is reduced to a mere municipal corporation, without the power to protect its people or to defend them from oppression from whatever quarter it comes. Whenever the national compact is violated and the citizens of this state are oppressed by cruel and unauthorized enactments, this legislature is bound to interpose its power and to wrest from the oppressor its victim." To show the spirit animating the people of Massachusetts in the assertion of these doctrines--however true they might be in principle--when the news was received of the abdication of Buonaparte and the restoration of the Bourbons in 1814--thus leaving the British government at liberty to employ all of its forces against the United States, the people of Massachusetts as well as of all New England hailed the news with joy and exultation, "as the harbinger of peace and the renewal of commerce;" and the event was celebrated at Boston by a religious ceremony and a sermon from the celebrated Dr. Channing.