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sident, by a liberal construction of the law, extended the continuance of the intercourse for three months from and after the period when the French engagement took effect; and admitted not only the goods that arrived, but all those that were shipped in England within three months after such period.

The conditions were precisely those, that made it obligatory on the President to restore the intercourse on the terms on which it was restored: that similar conditions on your part would have produced similar effects against your enemy, we are not left to conjecture. The adjustment actually made with Mr. Erskine (of which we shall have occasion to take further notice) has placed that question beyond all doubt.

Par. 22, 23, 24, 25.—“The American Government, assuming the repeal of the French Decrees to be absolute and effectual, most unjustly required Great Britain, in conformity to her declarations, to revoke her Orders in Council. The British Government denied that the repeal, which was announced in the letter of the French Minister for Foreign Affairs, was such as ought to satisfy Great Britain; and in order to ascertain the true character of the measure adopted by France, the Government of the United States was called upon to produce the instrument by which the alleged repeal of the French Decrees had been effected. If these decrees were really revoked, such an instrument must exist, and no satisfactory reason could be given for withholding it. At length, on May 21, 1812, and not before, the American Minister in London did produce a copy,or at least what purported to be a copy, of such an instrument. It professed to bear date the 28th of April, 1811, long subsequent to the dispatch of the French Minister of Foreign Affairs of the 5th of August, 1810, or even the day named therein, viz, the 1st of November following, when the operation of the French Decrees was to cease. This istrument expressly declared that these French Decrees were repealed in corrsequence of the American Legislature having, by their Act of the 1st of March, 1811, provided, that British ships and merchandise should be excluded from the ports and harbours of the United States. By this instrument, the only document produced by America as a repeal of the French Decrees, it appears, beyond a possibility of doubt or cavil, that the alleged repeal of the French Decrees was conditional, as Great Britain had asserted, and not absolute or final, as had been maintained by America; that they were not repealed at the time they were stated to be repealed by the American Government; that they were not repealed in conformity with a proposition, simultaneously made to both Belligerents, but that in consequence of a previous act on the part of the -American Government, they were repealed in favor of one Belligerent to the prejudice of the other; that the American Government, having adopted meaaures restrictive upon the commerce of both Belligerents, in consequence of edicts issued by both, rescinded these measures, as they affected that power which was the aggressor, whilst they put them in full operation against the party aggrieved, although the édicts of both powers continued in force; and, inetly, that they excluded the ships of war belonging to one Belligerent, whilst

they admitted into their ports and harbours the ships of war belonging to the other, in violation of one of the plainest and most essential duties of a Neutral Nation."

The United States did produce the instrument which satisfied them ;--the letter of the Minister of Foreign Affairs to their own accredited Minister ;-the usual instrument in such cases. And it was

on this document, and the subsequent evidence of its operation as respected the United States, that they required a similar abrogation, and no other on your part. The miserable juggle that you thought fit to adopt, when the cries of your manufacturers, and the arguments that you could no longer resist, obliged you to retreat, would have been spurned at by a more dignified Administration; and the only excuse for our Minister's share in it is, that it was suited to the capacities of those he had to deal with.-Our President gives no credit to it, as you see in his comment upon it. In all your other measures you have fallen into the snares of your enemy, either by imitating or opposing him, as his policy required; and in this, as it was impossible to devise a more wretched State trick, you have adopted his own.

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It tells but little, however, in favor of the integrity of your Government, that this instrument, which must be either genuine or not genuine, should be held good by you as a pretext for yielding to the cries of your manufacturers in revoking your Orders in Council, and not good to prevent the confiscation of our property. On this subject, and the preceding condition of this juggling instrument, wẹ shall have something further to say in what follows; but we must repeat here, that it was not, as you assert, the only document produced by America, as a repeal of the French Decrees. The letter of the Duc de Cadore, of the 5th of August, 1810, asserting that the French edicts were repealed, was also produced. This is the ordinary mode of revocation; it is your own mode; and the plan of a prospective operation had also been anticipated in your instructions to Mr. Erskine. Neither was there, properly speaking, any contingency to prevent their operation.-The opening left for England to come into the same measure, was provided for in the law of the United States.-The French no doubt agreed to it with reluctance; but the alternative was a precedent condition of the agreement, to wit, that the Nonimportation law should be put in force against her if she did not avail herself of it.-No new condition was required; and it is arrant sophistry to pretend that the French revocation was the consequence of any new measure adopted by the American Government; although it is pompously asserted to have been so, "beyond all doubt or cavil."

And though the contrary is here so positively asserted, nothing is more clear than that the revocation was made in strict "conformity with a proposition simultaneously made to both Belligerents.”—What was that proposition?-cach Belligerent accused the other of being the aggressor, or invader of the law of nations; each pretended to retaliate against the other; and each promised to recede from the invasion as soon as the other should do it. America proposed to each, that if she would recede from her invasion, as far as respected the United States, and the other should not follow her within three months, she would restore the intercourse to the one so receding, and shut out the other.France says, I agree to your conditions: I revoke my decrees from the 1st of November upon the precise terms that you propose. She propounds no new conditions, but repeats those propounded by America equally to both Belligerents; and even refers to the Act of Congress which provides for them without even an injunction, but with merely a bien entendu, it being well understood, that one of the alternatives shall follow.-As though she had said, "If England follows me pari passu, as she has promised, well; if not, you are engaged to oppose her unjust pretensions-how?-not vi et armis,-not pugnis et calcibus,-not unguibus et rostro; (which is uncommonly modest on her part, considering that we had offered her war against you, without offering you war against her;) but by putting in force that very Act which you were equally engaged to put in force against me in the contrary case." . The word conformity is unhappily chosen here. It reminds one of the very words of the French revocation; and of those words which you have on many occasions, and among others in the paper under consideration, most unrighteously withheld." Or that the United States, in conformity with the Act which you have just communicated, shall cause their rights to be respected by the English."-Why were the words, here italicised, left out in this paper? (Paragraph 20.) why have they been suppressed on all occasions? and why, more especially, have they been omitted in the quotation of the surrounding words by Sir William Scott in his judgment on the Snipe? they would have furnished a solution of his parenthesis, and changed all the doubts, that follow the construction of the words as he has given them, into the precision that he affects to be seeking." It being well understood (it is not said by whom or on what ground) that the English shall revoke their Orders in Council, and renounce their new principles of Blockade, or that the United States will cause their rights to be respected by the English." After the quotation, he continues

"how is this clause to be construed ?" (Edwards, p. 10.)—why, truly, it is of little consequence how this clause is to be construed; but mark the real words, "Or that the United States, in conformity with the Act which you have just communicated, will cause their rights to be respected by the English,"There is no difficulty in construing these words, "it being well understood" by both parties and by all the world, that one of the alternatives is to follow, because the Act herein spes cially referred to has so provided.'

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The Act of the 2d of March, 1811, too, (in other respects a mere recital of the previous Act, and of the fulfilment of the conditions of it in respect to France,) is only new as it puts an end to all cavil, as to the question of closing the doors of reconciliation with England after the three months had expired; and authorises the President still to admit her to a perfect freedom of intercourse on a similar abrogation of her hostile edicts, to that which had been exacted from France; to wit, that they should cease to violate the Neutral Rights of the United States; (we meddled not with any other question) and it is notorious (for the correspondence is before the world) that the most liberal use was made by the President of this authority to the last hour;-that instead of the expiration of three months, at which War might have been justly declared, three times six months were suffered to elapse before that measure was even proposed;-that every hazard was taken in the hope to avoid it; and that even the Sceptre of England had changed hands, not only without the hoped. for change of men or measures; but with an increased determination to insult us, as combining with France in doctrines which did not apply to us, and which we had distinctly disavowed;-with a renewed resolution to maintain the invasion of our Rights as an independent Nation; and reiterated assurances from your Minister that there was not the shadow of chance for a change.

Most heartily should we rejoice to see an explanation from the learned Judge, that would acquit him of his share of the censure attached to the concealment of these words. It would not be the first time, indeed, that we have found him right where we had supposed him wrong. We would thank him at the same time to inform us who the other Neutrals are, for whose rights we ought to have contended; and whether he has yet discovered that the French communication to the Conservative Senate related to Europe only, and the Continent of Europe, and the Continental System, and the Continental Ports, which are mentioned thrice three times in the instrument,

See end-Note B.

without a word of America, or a word that can be applied to her. But from the continual omission of the words here restored, to say nothing of the anachronisms, the distortions, the misconstruction and misapplication of other documents, some latent object must be presumed. And if it were even allowed that such were not the intention, it is not the less clear that the want of these words prevents the reader from that natural recurrence to the act itself, which would demonstrate the impartiality of the American government, which is here denied, as well as the fallacy of the reasoning drawn from the recital in the mutilated state in which it is presented. But when we find the same plan of suppressing the same words, in repeated instances of the diplomatic correspondence, state papers, and solemn judgments, we are constrained to pronounce upon it, as the spurious progeny of that incestuous intercourse between the executive and the judiciary, which it has been the pride and the boast of the present reign to divorce; and which cannot surely be less objectionable for being carried on behind the curtain.

It is paying but little compliment to the discernment of the English Nation, to suppose that deceit so palpable can have currency with it; and though it may be hoped that such deception will not last: yet the truth is, that the confiding Englishman is often deceived in this way; his integrity is easily imposed upon; his pursuits of a laudable industry prevent him from a critical investigation of the subject; but when he shall be roused to a personal inspection of the case, it is to be hoped that he will see as well the injustice as the impolicy of the imposition, by which he has been prevailed on to believe that we have an unnatural partiality to France, the only imputation under which he can be prevailed upon to consider us his enemy; and therefore most artfully insinuated, in equal contradiction of the evidence of our most essential interests, as of every document that has ever appcared, or ever can appear upon the subject; and the manufacturers at least, in reverting to their testimony on the relief that Mr. Erskine's treaty gave them, will hardly forget that we did actually maintain against France, on that occasion, the exclusion from intercourse which we opened to you,

Par. 26.-"Although the instrument thus produced was by no means that general and unqualified revocation of the Berlin and Milan Decrees which Great Britain had continually demanded, and had a full right to claim; and although this instrument, under all the circumstances of its appearance at that moment, for the first time, was open to the strongest suspicions of its authenticity; yet as the Minister of the United States produced it, as purporting to be a copy of the instrument of revocation, the Government of

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