The British courts conceded this to be a broken voyage.
In 1805, so ample were the supplies furnished France and Spain by this
method of evading the law, that the British court reversed its former
opinion. A large number of seizures followed. To cover the entire
continental coast, a paper blockade was declared by Britain about the
same time. The Administration could no longer continue its policy of
forbearance. Negotiation had failed. Retaliation was the only method
left. Jefferson, the father of his people, was a warrior neither by
nature nor practice. A foreign war meant to him the disarrangement of
domestic affairs, interference with domestic development, and the
accumulation of a debt which must fall in the last analysis upon the
common people, the least able to bear it. To a correspondent he
expressed his desire to avoid war until the national debt was
discharged, when the regular income would meet the expense of a war
and so prevent a new debt and increased taxes. His policy of
retrenchment, dictated by his love of the people, had reduced the army
and navy and left the land without adequate means of defence.
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