But when England tried to cut off the supplies which France was receiving from America, France adopted similar tactics toward England. Each accused the other of instituting these war measures. Between the two millstones, American commerce bade fair to be ground to powder. Britain, in order to recruit her navy, revived her practice of retaking her seamen who had deserted, wherever they might be found. She took a large number of men from American vessels, some of whom claimed to be American citizens instead of British deserters. This system of impressment she continued until it resulted in the War of 1812. Her refusal to yield possession of the forts on the American side of the boundary line remained as an additional grievance. So strong was the hostile feeling toward England, that if the French revolutionists had not plunged into such excesses as to compel their most ardent admirers to pause, the firm hand of Washington could scarcely have prevented a declaration of war against Britain instead of the temporary embargo which was adopted. As it was, a non-intercourse measure was killed in the Senate only by the deciding vote of Vice-President Adams. A war at this time, when the new Government had scarcely gotten upon its feet, when it was still obliged to borrow money from Holland to meet its expenses, when its borders were harassed by hostile savages and its forts occupied by the enemy, would have been ruinous if not suicidal. A foreign war would have been fatal to the adopted policy of a disinterested neutrality, not dependent upon force, and to an uninterrupted home development which was to continue for over a century. Neither the clamour nor defamation of the Democratic clubs, nor the insinuations of the opposition press that the President was biassed toward a monarchy because he wished eventually to transform his office into a kingship, could drive the cool Washington from his stand of neutrality. It was such self-control which drew from England's Minister, Canning, many years after, the tribute: "If I wished for a guide in a system of neutrality, I should take that laid down by America in the days of the presidency of Washington and the secretaryship of Jefferson."