POLITICAL AND COMMERCIAL 17 



settled that question for all the Napoleonic 

 wars. Neither would England allow that 

 a neutral might trade from port to port in 

 a belligerent country, except as a conces- 

 sion by both belligerents. 



France, her commerce swept from the 

 seas by the English, unable herself to carry 

 the produce of her colonies in French ves- 

 sels, modified her colonial laws and offered 

 to neutrals the right, for the war only, to 

 ship direct from colony to mother country. 

 England, however, would not allow this, 

 on the ground that a nation has no right to 

 substitute a neutral fleet of merchantmen 

 to do what, through war, she cannot do 

 herself, and what in time of peace would 

 be denied them. 



There were other disputed questions of 

 international law, but these were the most 

 important, and from 1800 to 1805 the 

 United States had little to complain of in 

 her treatment by the belligerent powers. 



With the French merchant fleet driven 

 from the sea, and England hampered by 



