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Updated: June 16, 2025
On the 6th December 1803, just a month after it had been tried, the Admiralty formulated the following conclusion: 'On a consideration of the expense attending the service of raising men on shore for His Majesty's Fleet comparatively with the number procured, as well as from other circumstances, there is reason to believe that either proper exertions have not been made by some of the officers employed on that service, or that there have been great abuses and mismanagement in the expenditure of the public money. This means that it was now seen that impressment, though of little use in obtaining men for the navy, was a very costly arrangement.
The latter also, being done by very small vessels, adapted to the short transit, had created for itself, or absorbed from elsewhere, a separate and proportionately large maritime population, rivalling that of the home country, while yet remaining out of easy reach of impressment and remote from immediate interest in European wars.
This concession to American navigation, despite the previous opposition, had become possible to Pitt, partly because its advisability had been demonstrated and the opportunity recognized; partly, also, because the immense increase of the active navy, caused by the war, created a demand for seamen, which by impressment told heavily upon the merchant navigation of the kingdom, fostered for this very purpose.
The number of the last must have been very great. For the period specially under notice, viz. that beginning with the year 1803, there are no less than five volumes of 'protections. Exemptions by custom probably originated at a very remote date: ferrymen, for example, being everywhere privileged from impressment.
One old gentleman, whose sorrel mare was taken from his cart, protested bitterly, saying that orders from Washington had forbidden the impressment of horses, and threatening the vengeance of the government on the supposed Federal raiders.
To save himself from impressment, Cross had dressed himself in long toggery as a captain of a merchant vessel, and was believed to be such. Having satisfied myself that everything went on favourably in that quarter, I again returned to Chatham, that I might escort my mother and grandmother into Devonshire.
To attribute his rise to his talents or his virtues is unpleasant; for it is tacitly to acknowledge that they are themselves less virtuous and less talented than he was. The Union has only had one struggle hitherto for its Existence. Enthusiasm at the Commencement of the War. Indifference toward its Close. Difficulty of establishing a military Conscription or impressment of Seamen in America.
The British were unwilling to relinquish their right of impressment, as a means of manning their fleets at that important crisis; and they regarded the claim of the Americans to an equal participation in the West India trade as unreasonable, because it would require England to renounce the long-settled principles of her commercial system.
The envoys were explicitly instructed that no stipulation requiring the repeal of that Act was to be made, unless an effectual remedy for these two evils was provided. The question of impressment, wrote Madison, "derives urgency from the licentiousness with which it is still pursued, and from the growing impatience of this country under it."
It should be remembered that they were all citizens of the United States, sailing in merchant ships; and yet the merchants, at least those of Boston, and the other New-England sea-ports, have, very generally, mocked the complaints of impressed seamen, and derided their representations, and have even denied the story of their impressment.
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