On the morning of November 29th, the Portuguese fleet set sail from the Tagus, with the Prince of Brazil and the whole of the royal family of Braganza on board, together with many of his faithful counsellors and adhe rents, and other persons attached to his fortunes. The fleet consisted of eight sail of the line, with frigates, brigs, and Brazil ships, in all amounting to :36 sail. While they passed through the British squadron, our ships fired a salute of 21 guns, which was returned with an equal number. The friendly meeting of the two fleets, at a juncture so critical and important, was a sight exceedingly interesting and affecting. Four English ships of the line were sent by the British admiral to ac company the royal family to Brazil. After Portugal had fallen under the dominion of France, the valuable island of Madeira was committed to the protection of British troops.
A new parliament assembled on the 22d of June 1807. Their debates during the summer were comparatively uninteresting ; but when the second session was open ed, the late expedition to Copenhagen, and our relations with America, furnished momentous subjects of discus sion. Of these, the subject of the orders in council might be regarded as the most practically important ; for, whatever might be said of the Copenhagen expedi tion, the deed was done ; and the human misery it had occasioned, could not be repaired, even had the advice suggested by Lord Sidmouth been adopted, for fixing a time for the restoration of the capture—a proposal which was triumphantly rejected by ministers. But the mea sures with regard to America were still open to recal.
In November 1806, Bonaparte had issued at Berlin his famous decree, in which he declared the British islands to be in a state of blockade. Ile also shut the ports of all the countries under his authority against all vessels which had last cleared from Great Britain, and subjected to confiscation all cargoes of British produce or manufacture. In aid of this regulation, he afterwards declared that all neutral vessels coming into any port of his dominion, should bring with them what was called a certificate of origin; being an assurance under the hand of the French consul at the port of shipment, that the cargo was not of British produce or manufacture, and that all vessels which should be met at sea without such a certificate, should be liable to capture. This Berlin decree, which, from the impotence of France to enforce it in its most material points, ought to have been regard ed as an insulting bravado, was very properly resented on the part of the Grenville ministry, by a mild decree, which interdicted the coasting trade of the enemy.
Tcn months elapsed without any other measure of commercial hostility from either cabinet, till November 1307 (a year after the publication of the Berlin decree) appeared our new orders in council, by the Portland ministry, containing these two substantial propositions : _First, That France, and all its tributary states, should be held to be in a state of blockade ; and that all vessels should be seized which attempted to trade from any neu tral port to those countries, or from them to any neutral port. Secondly, That all vessels should be liable to seizure, which should have on board any such certificate of origin as was required by the Berlin decree. Neutral vessels intended for a French or hostile port, were di rected at all events to touch first at Great Britain, from which, after paying certain duties, they may in some ca ses be allowed to proceed ; and in all cases they are per mitted, and indeed enjoined, to come to Great Britain when clearing out with a cargo from any port of the enemy.
America, from her sole enjoyment of independence, was deeply interested in the operation of these contend ing decrees, which placed her trade between two fires. But the interests of Britain were no less involved in this measure than those of America, and her trade to that quarter of the world began to suffer severely. The American merchants remonstrated against the orders, and petitioned parliament to rescind them. Their cause was pleaded at the bar of the house by an able lawyer, (Mr Brougham,) who did ample justice to their cause. The petitioners declared, that the obvious tendency of the orders in council was to annihilate our neutral com merce ; and that it actually had reduced our American trade to one third of its former extent. The preamble to the orders in council had justified the measure, by declaring that the decrees of France bad exhibited an unprecedented system of warfare, (for, independent of such provocation, our right to exercise such hostility towards neutrals, was not pleaded by the strongest ad %ocates of the orders). It had been also stated, in the same preamble, that neutrals had acquiesced in these decrees of France, and submitted to them as part of the new system of war. It was proved, however, that the French decrees were not unprecedented. In 1739, in 1756, under the oh] government of and at three subsequent periods since the French revolution, decrees had been issued by the enemy for capturing all vessels laden even in part with British produce, and yet they had not been followed by any such measure of retaliation on the part of Britain. With regard to the Berlin decree, it was not tun: that it had either bean enforced by France, or that America had acquiesced in it. General Armstrong, the American ambassador, so far from ac quiescing in the Berlin decree, had applied, to learn whether it was intended to be enforced against Ameri can vessels : and it was answered by the French govern ment, that the blockading decree was not intended to be enforced against the ships of that nation. From distinct evidence laid before the House of Commons, it was proved that neutral vessels had been publicly and regu larly chartered on voyages from this country to the Con tinent of Europe after the Berlin decree, in the same manner as before it ; that the prices of articles of colo nial produce and home manufactures, continued the same in the continental markets alter the Berlin decree down to the orders in council ; that the greatest mer chants in the neutral trade had never heard of a neutral vessel being condemned in the hostile ports ; and that the rate of insurance of such vessels had not been raised by the Berlin decree, but only by the orders in council. In defence of the policy of the orders, it was argued, that we should reduce the enemy by distress to abandon his system of blockade, and to permit the free ingress of our colonial produce and manufactures. The conti nent, it was said, would not calmly submit to such pri vations as the want of tea, sugar, tobacco, cotton, and foreign medicines. Bonaparte would at last be com pelled, by the murmurs of fifty millions of human beings, languishing for luxuries to which they had been habi tuated, to abandon his excluding system. It is strange to observe, that at the moment when ministers were pleading for this probability, they were avowedly encou raging the smuggling trade between Britain and France ; a trade which, as far as it could succeed, exactly sup plied the enemy with those luxuries, for the loss of which we expected the continent to mutiny against its tyrant.