To the British mind, it must be confessed, this second war with the United States presented a different aspect. Napoleon had absorbed France and all her continental neighbours save Prussia, Austria, and Russia. These with difficulty held back his land forces. To England was left the duty of keeping him in check upon the sea. War was declared by the United States just when Napoleon's invasion of Russia demanded the strictest enforcement of the blockade. England would willingly have avoided a war with the United States at this time, but felt that she could surrender neither the blockade nor right of search so essential to the conquest of Napoleon. It seemed to the English people that they alone stood between this man and the freedom of the world. They thought it extremely ungrateful that the Americans should resent their Orders in Council and other measures considered essential to their naval supremacy over the French. Granted that these blockades cut off some of the trade which the Americans as neutrals had secured during the two decades of European war; they should be willing to suffer so much in the common cause of liberty against one-man aggression. [Illustration: BLANK COMMISSION FOR PRIVATEER IN WAR OF 1812. Under these commissions, hundreds of private vessels armed themselves and preyed on the enemy, atoning for the ill success of the American arms on the land.] Every resistance to England's coercive measures was considered by her as a tacit aid to Napoleon. To the English mind, the hostile attitude of the Americans was a return to the French-American alliance of the Revolutionary days. The Americans were repaying their debt of obligations, but with an important difference. Where a King of France had aided colonists struggling for freedom, the colonists, now grown to a nation, were aiding the greatest enemy to freedom the world had yet seen. It was said that it would be simply a just retribution on America if England should withdraw from the breach and allow Napoleon to turn his ambitious designs upon the Western Republic. He would not hesitate to retake Louisiana, according to British opinion, for his revived American Empire.