the battle against the Orders in Council I fought alone.

In the beginning of the struggle, when in 1808 I contended before the House of Lords and House of Commons on behalf of the traders and manufacturers of Liverpool, Birmingham, London, and Manchester, I had to confront the opposition not only of the Tory Government, but of the Whig ministers of 1806 and 1807, who had issued the first Order, afterwards greatly extended in impolicy and injustice by the Orders of their Tory successors.

*

I do not deny that between the beginning of the contest in 1808 and the victory I gained in 1812, the Whigs, perhaps convinced by the evidence I produced in Parliament, perhaps acting upon their natural tendency to oppose the measures of their Tory successors (albeit the Orders issued by them were in reality identical with their own of January 1807), did afford me most valuable assistance. By their help, and by the great assistance I received from others, especially from Alexander Baring, I was enabled to prevail, and to achieve what I have always looked upon as the greatest success it ever was my fate to win. I shall not say a word upon what I have done for education, slavery, charitable trusts, or law reform, for all I did in such matters has been long before the public, is well known by my speeches in Parliament, by my writings, and by the fact that many of the measures which I so strenuously advocated have long since been adopted by the Legislature. I may, however, be pardoned for referring, with some pride, to the acknowledgment of my services, declared by the *See Speeches of Henry Lord Brougham, i. 393 et seq.

express order of her Majesty to Lord Palmerston upon the occasion of the peerage granted to me in 1860.*

I now proceed to the subject of the Orders in Council, and the circumstances of their repeal.

When Napoleon was satisfied that any attempt to subdue Great Britain by force of arms must prove ineffectual, and when he had, in consequence of this conviction, given up the project of invasion which at one time he had unquestionably entertained, he directed all his energies to the discovery of some scheme that might, by injuring our trade, cripple our resources, and lessen our wealth, and thereby weaken our authority on the Continent.

There can be no doubt that he borrowed his idea from the measures formerly adopted by the Directory,+ in accordance with which he issued from Berlin, in 1806, an interdict which declared the islands of Great Britain in a state of blockade, all British subjects, wherever found, prisoners of war, and all British goods, wherever taken, lawful prize. It further excluded from all the ports in France every vessel which had touched at any British port, no matter to what nation such vessel might belong.

The parts of this decree which most affected English interests were, the seizure of all British produce, no matter where found, and the exclusion from French

The words I refer to are as follows: "In consideration of the eminent public services of our right trusty and well-beloved Councillor, Henry Baron Brougham and Vaux, more especially in the diffusion of knowledge, the spread of education, and the abolition of the slave-trade and slavery, of our especial grant, certain knowledge, and mere motion, have advanced, preferred, and created him," &c.

+ In the decrees of July 1796 and January 1798.

1806.

This was the famous "Berlin Decree," dated the 20th November

ports of all vessels that had touched at any port of Great Britain.

If England had been content to remain quiet, and had left France and the neutral states to fight it out, it is extremely probable that our trade would in the long-run have gained rather than lost-at least, as long as we could furnish goods to meet the demand; which demand would have been met either by help of smuggling or by other contrivances.

Unfortunately, our rulers, taking a different view, determined to fight Napoleon with his own weapons, and to adopt measures of retaliation.

A more unsound-a more fatal policy-never was conceived. The Whigs were in office at the date of the Berlin Decree; and that Government, instead of waiting to see how the neutral powers, especially America, would act-instead of giving time for deliberation, or even submitting the question to the opinion of Parliament-took a course little likely to injure France, but fraught with certain and absolute destruction to ourselves.

The Whig Order was issued at the beginning of January 1807; it declared that England was authorised by the Berlin Decree to blockade the whole seaboard of France; to prohibit all vessels which had touched at any French port from entering our ports; and that if we pleased to exercise the power, we should be justified in seizing the cargoes. Such a wanton outrage against the rights of neutrals never before was perpetrated. No doubt France had by the Berlin Decree grossly violated neutral rights, but that was no justification of the course taken by England.

Before the close of 1807 the Whigs were succeeded

by a Tory Government, which about the end of that year issued other Orders in Council, every whit as objectionable as the Whig Order of January. Unquestionably the Americans considered the Whig Order identical in principle with Mr Perceval's. When, in 1808, I appeared at the bar of the House of Commons as counsel for the manufacturers and traders of England against these Orders, I made no distinction between the Whig and the Tory Order. I condemned both as being identical in principle, equally impolitic, and equally destructive of English commerce.

I am bound to say that when, four years after, I fought the great battle in Parliament, I was greatly assisted by the Whig party, who had by that time become abundantly hostile to that system of injustice and impolicy which, founded by themselves, had been, as I have already said, greatly extended by their Tory rivals.

I have called the Orders which followed the Whig Order of January 1807, Perceval's, but in truth James Stephen was their author.

He was a man of very considerable powers, combined with great firmness of purpose and unquenchable ardour. Strong in body as well as mind, he was capable of undergoing any amount of labour; and, wedded to his own opinion, he resisted all attacks with a firmness that amounted to obstinacy.

The best part of his life had been passed in the West Indies, where he practised at the bar; on his return to England, he came into Parliament under the auspices of his great friend Perceval; for Stephen was a member of the Evangelical party, to which Perceval had a strong leaning, although he did not actually belong to it. As a speaker he certainly had consider

able success; but yet neither as a debater nor as a speaker could he be classed as of a high order. He had not the correct taste which is acquired by the habit of frequenting refined society, and the practice of addressing a fastidious audience.

He held upon political subjects very decided opinions, and at all times was ready to assert them with the most determined and uncompromising spirit. He was strong upon the slave question, and felt this as above all others sacred, not only from his strong religious feelings, but from his near connection with Wilberforce, whose sister he had married; and upon this subject he published many valuable works.*

That the enthusiasm of his nature warped his better judgment, is shown by a remarkable pamphlet he published early in 1807, On the Dangers of the Country,' in which he actually argues, that all the misfortunes inflicted upon Europe by the wars with France were a punishment inflicted by Providence, because England had more than once rejected the measure for the abolition of slavery !—a somewhat unfair appreciation of the justice of Providence, seeing that so many of the Continental countries which had suffered most from Napo

* Among these were the 'Crisis of the Sugar Colonies,' the 'Life of Toussaint L'Ouverture,' the 'Opportunity,' 'The Slavery of the British West India Colonies, delineated as it exists both in Law and Practice, and compared with the Slavery of other Countries, ancient and modern ;' England Enslaved by her own Slave Colonies.' In reference to Stephen and the Orders in Council, see in Lord Brougham's 'Contributions to the Edinburgh Review,' ii. 81, the article "On Foreign Affairs," reviewing, among other pieces, 'The Speech of James Stephen, Esq., in the Debate in the House of Commons, March 6, 1809, on Mr Whitbread's Motion relative to the late Overture of the American Government, with supplementary remarks on the recent Orders in Council.' Stephen died in 1832. His son, Sir James, long Under-Secretary for the Colonies, was an author, and a contributor to the Edinburgh Review.'