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1 807-9] Milan Decree; Embargo and Non-Inter course Acts. 331 Order in Council declared that every port, from which for any reason the British merchant flag was excluded, should be shut to neutrals unless they first stopped at some port in the United Kingdom, or at Gibraltar or Malta, paid certain duties, and took out a license to trade. Finally, Napoleon, in the Milan Decree of December, 1807, ordered the confiscation of every neutral ship that had allowed itself to be searched by the British. Meanwhile the treaty of 1794 with England had expired (1806); Jefferson's efforts to make a new one failed; and American merchants were left unprotected, to be crushed between the two belligerents. Between the Orders in Council and the Berlin Decree there was but one of three courses left for the United States to pursue. She must fight for her neutral rights, tamely submit, or abandon the ocean. Jefferson chose the last. In December, 1807, he put the Non-importation Act of 1806 into force, and asked Congress to close the ports of the United States to foreign trade and commerce. An Embargo Act was quickly passed; and from December, 1807, to March, 1809, all trade with foreign countries ceased. On France and Great Britain the Act produced no effect; that on America was ruinous. The people along the frontier evaded the law openly. A long series of supplementary Acts was carried, designed to enforce the embargo and ending with a Force Act, authorising the President to use the army and the navy to execute the law. Wherever it was possible, the Acts were defied. Against the Force Act the commercial part of the country rose as one man ; and in March, 1809, the embargo was lifted. In its stead a non-intercourse law was enacted. By this all trade was forbidden with France and Great Britain, and the colonies, dependencies, and ports under their flags. Nothing could be carried to them; nothing could be brought from them. But should France revoke her decrees, or Great Britain her Orders in Council, the law might be suspended, as to the country so doing, by proclamation of the President. Three days after signing the Non-intercourse Act, Jefferson closed his second term of office ; and James Madison became President of the United States (March, 1809). Scarcely was he fairly settled in his new office when David Erskine, the English minister, appeared before the Secretary of State with an offer from his government to recall the hated Orders. The proposition was accepted, and in April three pairs of notes were exchanged. In the first of these Erskine, in the name of his Majesty, offered reparation for the attack on the Chesapeake, disavowed the order of Admiral Berkeley, and engaged to return the three American sailors and make provision for the families of the slain. In the second he announced the willingness of his Majesty to recall the Orders of Council, if assurance were given that the United States would renew intercourse with Great Britain. In the third he named June 10, 1809, as the day whereon the Orders should be recalled in respect of the CH. IX.