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Trade in Time of Warfinal "peace" until 30 September, nearly the end of the Balticshipping season.) Above all, what reception would Britain giveto any neutral vessel trading with its Baltic enemies—Britain,which "with her seven hundred ships of war, can block up theCatigat as effectually as if an immense dam was erected overit?" 41N o sane American merchant of 1800 would risk too large aportion of his wealth in an area that might become a cockpit ofwar at any moment. Conditions similar to those of 1800 wouldexist in the Baltic between 1807 and 1812, and yet hundreds ofAmerican vessels wouldflock through the Sound and Belts, butonly because by then there was nowhere else to go.At the end of 1800, the Baltic situation was one of suchtension and imbalance that it could not long remain static.Russian aristocrats, cut off from the chief market for the productsof their estates and appalled by rapprochement withFrance, would not long accept Paul's new foreign policy.England, cut off from the source of muc h of the timber used inherfleets and from the source of 90 per cent of the hemp thatwas so vital to her survival, 42 could not long accept Paul'sforeign policy. Only the descent of winter checked a suddenand violent resolution of the unnatural situation. Even criseshibernate in winter in the Baltic.As spring came to the Northern Hemisphere in 1801, Federalistsin America worried that that idiot Jacobin, PresidentJefferson, would allow America to be drawn into that "hostilecompact," the League of Armed Neutrality of 1800; 43 a fewAmerican farmers, surmising that hemp from Russia wouldsoon be a rare article, thought of raising some themselves as avaluable cash crop; 44 and American captains and supercargoes85