Remonstrances soon came from the British Government that "strict prohibitions were being enforced to the admission of British commodities and manufactures into France, and very vigorous restrictions were imposed on British vessels entering French ports"; but, in spite of all representations, we had the mortification of seeing the hardware of Birmingham, and the ever-increasing stores of cotton and woollen goods, shut out from France and her subject-lands, as well as from the French colonies which we had just handed back.
In this policy of commercial prohibition Napoleon was confirmed by our refusal to expel the Bourbon princes.

He declined to accept our explanation that they were not officially recognized, and could not be expelled from England without a violation of the rights of hospitality; and he bitterly complained of the personal attacks made upon him in journals published in London by the French _emigres_.

Of these the most acrid, namely, those of Peltier's paper, "L'Ambigu," had already received the reprobation of the British Ministry; but, as had been previously explained at Amiens, the Addington Cabinet decided that it could not venture to curtail the liberty of the Press, least of all at the dictation of the very man who was answering the pop-guns of our unofficial journals by double-shotted retorts in the official "Moniteur." Of these last His Majesty did not deign to make any formal complaint; but he suggested that their insertion in the organ of the French Government should have prevented Napoleon from preferring the present protests.
This wordy war proceeded with unabated vigour on both sides of the Channel, the British journals complaining of the Napoleonic dictatorship in Continental affairs, while the "Moniteur" bristled with articles whose short, sharp sentences could come only from the First Consul.

The official Press hitherto had been characterized by dull decorum, and great was the surprise of the older Courts when the French official journals compared the policy of the Court of St.James with the methods of the Barbary rovers and the designs of the Miltonic Satan.[229] Nevertheless, our Ministry prosecuted and convicted Peltier for libel, an act which, at the time, produced an excellent impression at Paris.[230] But more serious matters were now at hand.

Newspaper articles and commercial restrictions were not the cause of war, however much they irritated the two peoples.
The general position of Anglo-French affairs in the autumn of 1802 is well described in the official instructions given to Lord Whitworth when he was about to proceed as ambassador to Paris.