In 1805 there was printed in London and published anonymously a book which is now believed to have been officially inspired. It was actually written by James Stephen, and the title was "War in Disguise, or the Frauds of the Neutral Flag." Its argument was the need of the destruction of France to prevent the ruin of England. The immediate dilemma considered was the sacrifice of Great Britain's maritime rights or a quarrel with the neutral powers. The author thought that the system of licenses--"salt-water indulgences," he called them--was shaking England's supremacy exactly as the papal indulgences of the fifteenth century had shaken the Roman supremacy. In attacking neutral trade, he thought, there was little danger of provoking hostilities or evoking reprisals. As to America, particularly, a non-importation policy on her part would injure herself alone. She was far too honorable to confiscate the property of English merchants within her borders and far too shrewd to expose to retributive seizure the enormous commerce which she herself had afloat. Suppose, however, he continued, that neither the sacrifice of maritime rights nor the quarrel with neutral powers be accepted, there remains still a third possibility--to admit the pretension that "free ships make free goods," to suspend the navigation laws and then to seize all the benefits of neutral carriers. "Let brooms be put at the mastheads of all our merchantmen, and their seamen be sent to the fleets." This, he argued, would be a less evil than that under which English commerce was suffering, unless, indeed, all parties, including the enemy, would abjure the right of capturing merchant ships or private effects of an enemy--a visionary means of reconciling naval war with commercial peace. Such general abjuration was impossible, and there remained no remedy for England's ills save peace with Bonaparte. But the mere suggestion of this action was preposterous. The insuperable barrier was the British constitution. Austria and Russia might make peace with a military despot; but with a man who employed the leisure of peace for no other purpose than to enslave the smaller powers of the Continent no peace was possible for a free country like England, except such a one as would be equivalent to absolute surrender. As might have been expected, the Englishman who wrote "War in Disguise" concluded his argument with a pious appeal to the Almighty, obedience to whose righteous laws is the soundest political wisdom, and who wills not only the end, but the means--in this case "volunteers, navy and maritime rights." This temper for war to the bitter end was quite as strong in France as in England; and while the English appealed to God and righteousness, it was equally characteristic that the French were at the same time exploiting a parallel drawn from classical history--that of Rome and Carthage.