Great Britain, desirous of reverting, if possible, to the ancient and accus tomed principles of maritime war, determined upon revoking conditionally the Orders in Council. Accordingly in the month of June last, his Royal Highness the Prince Regent was pleased to declare in Council, in the name and on the behalf of his Majesty, that the Orders in Council should be revoked, as far as respected the ships and property of the United States, from the 1st of August following. This revocation was to continue in force, provided the Government of the United States should, within a time to be limited, repeal their Restrictive Laws against British commerce. His Majesty's Minister in America was expressly ordered to declare to the Government of the United States, that this measure had been adopted by the Prince Regent, in the earnest wish and hope, either that the Government of France, by further relaxations of its system, might render perseverance on the part of Great Britain in retaliatory measures unnecessary, or if this hope should prove delusive, that his Majesty's Government might be enabled, in the absence of all irritating and restrictive regulations on either side, to enter with the Government of the United States into amicable explanations, for the purpose of ascertaining whether, if the necessity of retaliatory measures should unfortunately continue to operate, the particular measures to be acted upon by Great Britain could be rendered more acceptable to the American Govern ment, than those hitherto pursued."" It will be seen by what is said above, that the instrument here referred to, even if genuine and duly promulgated, which none but a fool will suppose, and which even Lord Castlereagh discovered and pronounced to be the veriest juggle that ever was produced, though he afterwards preferred retreating by it to acknowledging the true fact, that he was beaten from the ground that he had almost sworn to maintain;-it will be seen, we say, that the instrument here referred to, could in no shape be considered any thing more than a corroboration of the French Decrees having been repealed from the 1st of November preceding, to which date, as the period of the revocation, it literally refers. It could, if genuine, only be considered as certifying that the preceding condition of the revocation had been carried into effect by the United States. It added not a tittle to the matter of fact, neither does it even pretend to be the act of revocation; but merely a certificate of facts predicated upon it. Sir William Scott is content with the revocation of the 5th of August 1810, to a certain point-" I am authorized to declare that the Berlin and Milan Decrees are revoked,"-(not will be revoked,')— "and will cease to have their effect from the 1st of November." (Edwards, p. 9.) And it is only by the following words, in the mutilated state in which he has given them, confounding, as we have shown, the true meaning, that he finds any thing to remove or destroy the satisfaction that he would otherwise have derived from the words here quoted. We have sought, but in vain, for some erroneous translation of Cadore's letter to Armstrong, to apologize for this mutilation, as well in the letters of the British Secrctary of State to Mr. Pinkney, as in the judgments on the Fox, and on the Snipe, and in the paper before us; and we may truly say, that we should have been glad to find it, but we have never seen any such, and in the Appendix referred to in the margin of this passage in the report, the words are stated at length; and they are substantially repeated in another document in this Appendix, equally before the court, "conformably to the act communicated.” But we have in this paragraph a distinct avowal that the condition required of us to insure our emancipation from the effects of your orders, was, that we should obtain of France a general and unqualified revocation of the Berlin and Milan Decrees, as well in respect to other nations as to ourselves. And this is the termination of all the zig-zaggery and equivocation that were used in approaching our Government on the subject.-It was rather too much to demand of us at any rate, since we never belonged to the neutral family that armed to defend their mutual rights against your incroachments; we never interfered with your invasions of those rights, either in the attack on the Spanish frigates, or the bombardment of Copenhagen; though, by the way, had we sought a cause of quarrel, we might have found it as crcditors of Spain in this diminution of her means of payment ;—we could but deplore these indelible stains on the land of our Ancestors :-but after your instructions to Mr. Erskine to confine the revocation of your decrees to its operations as far as respected America; a modest Minister might well be backward in propounding such an absurdity as that of the United States of America legislating for the states of Europe. It is matter of regret that this inconsistency escaped the researches of the profound civilian; (who, playing Grumio, in his judgment on the Snipe, has given us a lecture on family duty;) as he must have concluded that " the rule could have no locality;" and that what the United States had a right to agree to with Mr. Canning, they had an equal right to agree to with the Duc de Cadore. Par. 27.-"In order to provide for the contingency of a Declaration of War on the part of the United States, previous to the arrival in America, of the said Order of Revocation, instructions were sent to his Majesty's Minister Plenipotentiary accredited to the United States (the execution of which instructions, in consequence of the discontinuance of Mr. Foster's functions, were at a subsequent period intrusted to Admiral Sir John Borlase Warren,) directing him to propose a cessation of hostilities, should they have com R menced; and further to offer a simultaneous repeal of the Orders in Council on the one side, and of the Restrictive Laws on British ships and commerce on the other." Not disputed. 6 Par. 28.—“They were also respectively empowered to acquaint the American Government, in reply to any inquiries with respect to the blockade of May, 1806, whilst the British Government must continue to maintain its legality, that in point of fact this particular blockade had been discontinued for a length of time, having been merged in the general retaliatory blockade of the enemy's ports under the Orders in Council, and that his Majesty's Government had no intention of recurring to this or to any other of the blockades of the enemy's ports, founded upon the ordinary and accustomed principles of maritime law, which were in force previous to the Orders in Council, without a new notice to neutral powers in the usual form." Here is a distinct avowal that the blockade of May, 1806, was merged in the subsequent Orders in Council. We beg a recurrence therefore to what has been said under Paragraph 18. The construc tion given to the subsequent orders by our Government is here distinctly confirmed, so that it not only appears that we had always imagined that we were demanding the revocation of this deed in demanding the revocation of its successors, but that we imagined rightly. How then can it be asserted (Paragraph 18.) that this order was never considered by us as one of the edicts which violated the commerce of the United States. The truth is, and it will so clearly appear by a recurrence to the correspondence, that the view of the case now formally asserted was that under which the United States treated it. It was only relinquished by Mr. Pinkney, when it was found convenient by your Government to adopt another construction.—It was only on finding that Marquis Wellesley had "not adopted," but "had resisted" the idea of incorporation here re-asserted, that he treated of it on separate ground. (Pinkney to Wellesley, 21st Sept 1810.) The offer made by Mr. Foster, in this case, was not merely that a new notice would be given to neutral powers, which is here attempted by a side wind to be let in as sufficient; but also that the blockade, if renewed, should be accompanied by a sufficient force to make it legal. Par. 29.-" The American Government, before they received intimation of the course adopted by the British Government, had, in fact, proceeded to the extreme measure of declaring war, and issuing "Letters of Marque,” notwithstanding they were previously in possession of the report of the French Minister for Foreign Affairs, of the 12th of March, 1812, promulgating anew the Berlin and Milan Decrees, as fundamental laws of the French Empire, under the false and extravagant pretext, that the monstrous princi pies therein contained were to be found in the Treaty of Utrecht, and were therefore binding upon all States. From the penalties of this code, no nation was to be exempt, which did not accept it, not only as the rule of its own conduct, but as a law, the observance of which it was also required to enforce upon Great Britain." It is notorious on the face of the French document here referred to, that it did not contemplate America at all.-Not only is there no mention made of America in it; but Europe, the continental system, and the ports of the continent, are, as we before observed, the continual burden of the song.-France and the countries in alliance with, or in subjugation to her, as the paper before us expresses it, (and to which, whether incorporated or conquered, we could have no access without the consent of the ruling powers,) were alone parties to this instrument, which announces the continuance of the Berlin and Milan Decrces against those powers only. who allow their flags to be denationalized. It is not true then that no nation was to be exempt from the penalties of this code; for from this character of Denationalization the flag of the United States was already exempted by the operation of the law against you, which had been offered to you against your enemy. And it was still in your power, by revoking your hostile edicts, as they affected us, and us only if you please, to liberate your commerce, and your marine, from every restraint that was imposed upon it. And had it been otherwise;-had the French document had any reference to us, still it was only the declaration of France; -our consent was necessary to make us party to it; and to this we were not only not invited, but it was before your eyes in documents and correspondence to which you were party with us, that we distinctly disavowed the French doctrines promulgated in it, and subscribed to the English in every point of the law of nations, which it embraces.'-Your effort, in your declaration of the 21st of April, to lead the world, and none more than your own people, into the crroneous belief of French influence on our councils, by blending us with France, as the support. ers of those doctrines, with this evidence before your eyes, has already been treated by our President as an insult, and chastised as it deserves.2 Par. 30.-"In a Manifesto, accompanying their declaration of hostilities, in addition to the former complaints against the Orders in Council, a long 'See Letter from a Calm Observer to a Noble Lord. (Gale and Curtis, 1812.) 2 President's Message, 1st June, 1812, par. 12, as printed in the Times, "And as an additional insult, &c." list of grievances was brought forward; some trivial in themselves, others which had been mutually adjusted, but none of them such as were ever before alleged by the American Government to be grounds for war." -- In this Paragraph, there is the highest evidence of the anxiety of the United States to maintain to the last extremity the relations of Peace; of their forbearance under multiplied injuries;-of their efforts to avert the storm which must be prejudicial to the mutual interests of two countries, whose interest must ever be mutual in the eyes of every enlightened statesman.-We know not whether we can take credit for what is here said, that none of our grievances were ever before alleged by our government to be grounds for War.-Certainly, we have given some broad hints that they were so; though to use the words of Mr. Madison," it is no less true that we are warmly dispo sed to cherish all the friendly relations subsisting with Great Britain." " If in this temper, and with this view, we have forborne to allege those grievances as grounds for war, can any one look at them for a moment without seeing that they are such, and that such forbearance is the best evidence of patience and long suffering on our part? Can any one look at them without seeing that while the cup of bitterness was swelling to the brim, we were draining the cup of concilia. tion to the dregs. The catalogue is too copious, and would indeed be too humiliating, to be recapitulated without some feelings of indignation, that our government had borne them so long, were it not for the hostile feelings excited by the misconduct of your enemy, and our aversion from indulging, at your expense as well as our own, the rapacity of your cruisers. We will select but one of them; look at the American seaman impressed on board a British man of war; chained to the gun of his oppressor to deal out death to a brother of mankind, perhaps his own brother, and in every case no enemy of his :-see him brought to the gangway for disobedience to an officer who has no right to command him, and even for an effort to advise the officers of his own Government of his situation; -see him wounded in such a cause, and dying by the side of a brave English messmate; and hear their mutual groans;--the one soothed by the reflection that can sweeten death" I die for my country ;"the other, turning his eyes to the forger of his chains-“ I am mur. dered and unrevenged."-And is it to be imputed to us as a fault that we are at length at war for such, among other causes; because, in the hope of redress, we have worn out years in seeking the abolition of this * See this quotation more at large in Letters from a Cosmopolite to a Cler• gyman, page 55, or the Monthly Review for August last. |