228 THE TREATY OF WASHINGTON. 
gland gave to us good cause of rupture; we barely 
escaped war with France in 1798; we were forced 
into war with England in 1812; and in the course 
of all these events the hand of the Government was 
restrained, if not paralyzed, by the factious force of 
sympathies in the United States, on the one side for 
France and on the other for England. Hence, alike 
in the guast war with the former, and the declared 
war with the latter, the results as to the United States 
were uncertain, imperfect, trivial even, compared with 
the great objects which might have on seo 
ed by united counsels. 
On the side of France, however, it must be admit- 
ted that our disposition to avoid pushing matters to 
extremities contributed to gain for us the immense 
benefit of the acquisition of Louisiana. 
Afterward, although the Berlin and Milan Decrees 
of France and the Orders in Council of Great Britain 
constituted each alike good cause of war with either, 
yet the United States held back at vast sacrifice, until 
continued assertion of the right to impress seamen on 
board of our merchant ships, and, indeed, to visit our 
ships-of-war, and other exaggerations of belligerent 
right, forced us into war with Great Britain. 
The treaty by which that war was concluded is 
one of the most unsatisfactory in the annals of the 
United States. It was absolutely silent in regard to 
all the subjects of controversy which had occasioned 
the war. Nothing is said of the belligerent encroach- 
ments of Great Britain on the neutral rights of the 
United States, nothing of maritime search, nothing of 
