The Burr affair, however, was but a trifle compared with the difficulties arising from our relations with England. That country had always asserted over the United States the right of impressment, a right, namely, to search American ships, and to take therefrom any Englishmen found among the crew. In many cases, Englishmen who had been naturalized in the United States were thus taken. This alleged right had always been denied by the United States, and British perseverance in it finally led to the war of 1812. Another source of contention was the neutral trade. During the European wars in the early part of the century the seaport towns of the United States did an immense and profitable business in carrying goods to European ports, and from one European port to another. Great Britain, after various attempts to discourage American commerce with her enemies, undertook to put it down by confiscating vessels of the United States on the ground that their cargoes were not neutral but belligerent property,—the property, that is, of nations at war with Great Britain. And, no doubt, in some cases this was the fact,—foreign merchandise having been imported to this country to get a neutral name for it, and thence exported to a country to which it could not have been shipped directly from its place of origin. In April, 1806, the President dispatched Mr. Monroe to London in order, if possible, to settle these disputed matters by a treaty. Monroe, in conjunction with Mr. Pinckney, our minister to England, sent back a treaty which contained no reference whatever to the matter of impressments. It was the best treaty which they could obtain, but it was silent upon this vital point. The situation was a perilous one; England had fought the battle of Trafalgar the year before; and was now able to carry everything before her upon the high seas. Nevertheless, the President’s conduct was bold and prompt. The treaty had been negotiated mainly by his own envoy and friend, Monroe, and great pressure was exerted in favor of it,—especially by the merchants and shipowners of the east. But Jefferson refused even to lay it before the Senate, and at once sent it back to England. His position, and history has justified it, was that to accept a treaty which might be construed as tacitly admitting the right of impressment would be a disgrace to the country. The other questions at issue were more nearly legal and technical, but this one touched the national honor; and with the same right instinct which Jefferson showed in 1807, the people of the United States, five years later, fixed upon this grievance, out of the fog in which diplomacy had enveloped our relations with England, as the true and sufficient cause of the war of 1812.