Napoleon's Wars_ An International History, 1803-1815 - Charles Esdaile [201]
The political foundations of the British war effort were no more solid. The Portland administration may have been more committed to the struggle than its predecessor, but it was also very vulnerable. Amongst Whigs like Richard Sheridan, Lord Grey and Lord Holland, it was felt even now that Napoleon personified the cause of progress. In the course of the 1790s, a number of Whigs - most famously Edmund Burke, but also the current Prime Minister, Lord Portland - had become supporters of the war, but this gain had been offset by the defection of a number of disillusioned Tories to the peace party. Meanwhile, if the failure of the talks of had 1806 temporarily silenced most of those who opposed the war, the Portland administration was also hampered by other factors, not least the personality of George Canning. While there was no doubting his talents, his energy or his hatred of Napoleon, the Foreign Secretary was a man of questionable judgement whose determination to defeat the French blinded him to political realities, and made him impatient with more circumspect colleagues. Highly mercurial in temperament, he was also very vain and deeply ambitious, and it was only too predictable that sooner or later this would produce serious tension in the Cabinet. To make matters worse, being aged and unwell, Lord Portland was unable to provide much in the way of leadership or keep the dynamic Canning in line. At risk of internal strife, the Cabinet also had to run the risk of losing the support of the throne. In ordinary circumstances, this would not have been an issue. King George III both loathed Napoleon and shared his ministers’ antipathy to the Catholic emancipation that was the foremost domestic issue of the day. But the king was prone to bouts of porphyria that periodically left him completely incapacitated and threatened to have him replaced with the pro-Whig Prince of Wales, there being no guarantee that the latter would not oust Portland the moment he assumed the regency.
However, Britain’s stability cannot just be measured in terms of Westminster. Just as important was the Continental Blockade. Almost a year into its existence this measure was still being tightened up. The response of the British had been to introduce a series of ‘orders-in-council’ whose general trend was to declare all ships originating from the ports of France and her allies and satellites to be legal prize, and to impose severe limitations on the movement of neutral vessels: they might put to sea, but only with the proviso that they visited a British port and paid a heavy duty on their cargoes. To Napoleon this was unacceptable, and in the course of a visit that he paid to the Kingdom of Italy in November and December 1807 he issued two fresh decrees - the so-called Decrees of Milan - that declared that any vessel that complied with Britain’s regulations was liable both to confiscation on its return to port and to capture on the high seas by French privateers. This put the Portland administration under greater pressure than ever. Over the course of time and through changing circumstances, Britain circumvented the Blockade by developing new markets and undercover links with the Continent, but in 1807 it was by no means clear that things would work out so well. To make matters worse, the United States, not only the chief neutral state but also a commercial operator of great importance, was so exercised by the situation that on 22 December 1807 President Jefferson passed into law a total embargo on all trade with Britain and France alike. Hit by both a squeeze on exports and a general increase in the price of raw materials, many