Page:The Presidents of the United States, 1789-1914, v. I.djvu/230

186 LIVES OF THE PRESIDENTS pied him played a part subordinate to that played by questions of foreign policy, and in this new sphere Mr. Madison was not, by nature or training, fitted to exercise such a controlling influence as he had formerly brought to bear in the framing of our Federal government. As secretary of state, he was an able lieutenant to Mr. Jefferson, but his genius was not that of an executive officer so much as that of a lawgiver. He brought his great historical and legal learning to bear in a paper entitled, "An Ex amination of the British Doctrine which subjects to Capture a Neutral Trade not open in the Time of Peace." But the troubled period that followed the rupture of the treaty of Amiens was not one in which legal arguments, however masterly, counted for much in bringing angry and insolent combatants to terms. In the gigantic struggle be tween England and Napoleon the commerce of the United States was ground to pieces as between the upper and the nether millstone, and in some respects there is no chapter in American history more painful for an American citizen to read. The outrageous affair of the "Leopard" and the "Chesapeake" was but the most flagrant of a series of wrongs and insults, against which Jefferson s embargo was doubtless an absurd and feeble pro test, but perhaps at the same time pardonable as the only weapon left us in that period of national weakness.