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the stipulations of the treaty of Utrecht upon this subject.

England acts upon the principle of seizing the enemy's merchandize, under whatever flag it might be. The empire has been compelled to admit the principle of seizing English merchandize, or proceeding from the commerce of England, in whatever territory it may be. England seizes in every sea the pasengers, merchants, and carriers belonging to the nation she is at war with. France is compelled to seize the English travellers, merchants, and carriers, in whatever part of the continent they may be, and wherever she can reach them; and if in this system there be any thing more consonant to the spirit of the age, it is the injustice of the new English laws that must be charged with it.

I have been pleased to enter into these explanations with you, to convince you that your union with the empire is the necessary result of the British laws of 1806 and 1807, and not the effect of any ambitious calculation. In my civil laws you will find a protection, which, in your maritime position, you can no longer find in the political code. That maritime commerce, which constituted your prosperity, cannot henceforth he revived, but in conjunction with the restoration of my maritime power. The rights of nations, the liberty of the seas, and a general peace, must be re-conquered at one and the same time. When I shall have upwards of 100 sail of the line, I shall subjugate England in a few campaigns. The seamen of your coasts, and the materials conveyed to the mouths of your rivers, are necessary to my purpose. France, within her old limits, could not construct a marine in time of war.

When her coasts were blockaded, she was compelled to receive the law. Now from the increase my empire has received within the last six years, I can build, equip, and

and arm 25 sail of the line yearly, without the slightest delay or obstructions from the existence of a maritime war.

The accounts that have been given me of the good disposition which animates your fellow-citizens have afforded me pleasure; and I hope, in a short time, to have to praise the zeal and bravery of your seamen.

AMERICA.

Mr. Pinckney to Lord Wellesley-Great Cumberland Place, Dec. 10, 1810.

MY LORD,

In compliance with the request contained in your note of the 6th instant, I proceed to recapitulate in this letter, (with some variations, however,) the statements and remarks which I had the honour to make in our conference of the

5th, respecting the revocation of the French decrees, as connected with a change of system here on the subject of neutral rights.

Your lordship need not be told, that I should have been happy to offer at a much earlier moment every explanation in my power on matters of such high concern to the rights and commerce of

my country, and the future character of its foreign relations, if I had been made to understand that explanation was desired.

My written communications of August and November were concise, but they were not intended to be insufficient. conclusive, and abstained from laboured They furnished evidence which I thought commentary, because I deemed it superfluous. I had taken up an opinion, which I abandoned reluctantly and late, that the British government would be eager to follow the example of France, in recalling, as it had professed to do in promulgating, that extraordinary system of maritime annoyance, which in 1807 presented to neutral trade in almost all its directions the hopeless alternative of inactivity or confiscation; which considered it as a subject to be

regulated, like the trade of the United Kingdoms, by the statutes of the Briand fashion it by every variety of extish parliament, and undertook to bend pedient to all the purposes and even the caprices of Great Britain. I had no

idea that the remnant of that system, productive of no conceivable advantage to England, and deservedly odious for its theory and destructive effects to others, could survive the public declaration of France that the edicts of Berlin and Milan were revoked. Instructed at length, however, by your lordship's continued silence, and alarmed for the property of my fellow-citizens, now more than ever exposed by an erroneous confidence to the ruinous operation of the British orders, I was preparing to support my general representations by detailed remonstrance, when I received the honour of your note of the 4th instant. In the conference which ensued, I troubled your lordship with a verbal communication, of which the following is nearly the substance. The doubts which appear to stand in the way of the recal of the British orders in council (under which denomination I include certain orders of blockade of a kindred principle and spirit) must refer to the manner, or the terms, or the practical effect of the alleged repeal of the decrees of France. That the manner of the proceeding is satisfactory to the British government cannot be questioned; since it is precisely that in which its own numerous orders for establishing, modifying, or removing blockades and other maritime obstructions, are usually proclaimed to neutral states and merchants. -The French repeal was officially notified on the 5th of August to the minister plenipotentiary of the United States at Paris by the French minister of foreign affairs, as I had the honour to inform your lordship in my letter of the 25th of the same month, which not only gave the impost, but (as the enclosed copy will shew) adopted the words of General Armstrong's statement to me of the tenour and effect of that notice.

On the 9th of August the notification of Gen. Armstrong was published in the Moniteur, the official journal of the French government, as the act of that government; and thus became a formal declaration and a public pledge to all who had an interesi in the matter of it. It would be a waste of time to partlcularize the numerous instances of analogous practices in England, by which this course is countenanced; but a recent example happeus to be before me, and may therefore be mentioned. The partial recall, or modification, of the

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English blockade of the ports and places of Spain from Gijon to the French ter ritory (itself known to my government only through a circular notification to me, recited afterwards in the London Gazette) was declared to the American and other governments in exactly the same mode.

I think it demonstrable that the terms in which the French revocation was an nounced are just as free from well founded objection as the manner. Your lordship's view of them is entirely unknown to me; but I am not ignorant that there are those in this country, who, professing to have examined them with care, and having certainly examined them with jealousy, maintain that the revocation on the 1st of November was made to depend, by the obvious meaning to those terms, upon a condition precedent, which has not been fulfilled, namely, the revocation by Great Britain of her orders in council, including such blockading orders as France complains of as illegal.-If this were even admitted to be so, I am yet to learn upon what ground of justice the British government could decline to meet, by a similar act on its part, an advance, thus made to it by its adversary in the face of the world, towards a co-operation in the great work of restoring the liberty of the ocean; so far at least as respects the orders in council of 1807 and 1809, and such blockades as resemble them. It is not necessary, however, to take this view of the question; for the French revocation turns on no condition precedent, is absolute, precise, and unequivocal. What construction of the document which declares that revocation might be made by determined suspicion and distrust, I have no wish and am not bound to enquire. Such interpreters would not be satisfied by any form of words, and would be likely to draw the same conclusion from perfect explicitness and studied obscurity. It is enough for me that the fair and natural and necessary import of the paper affords no colour for the interpretation I am about to examine.-The French declaration," that the decrees of Berlin and Milan are revoked, and that from the 1st of November they will cease to have any effect," is precision itself: but they are followed by these words" bien enten du qu'en consequence de cette declaration les Anglais revoqueront leurs arrets

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de Conseil, et renonceront aux nouveaux principes de blocus qu'ils ont voulu etablis, ou bien que les Etats Unis, conformement a l'acte que vous venez de communiquer, feront respecter leurs Droits par les Anglais."-If these words state any condition, they state two, the first depending upon Great Britain, the last upon the United States; and, as they are put in the disjunctive, it would be extravagant to hold that the non-performance of one of them is equivalent to the non-performance of both. I shall take for granted, therefore, that the arguments against my construction of the Duke of Cadore's letter must be moulded into a new form. It must deal with two conditions, instead of one: and, considering them equally as conditions precedent, to be performed (disjunctively) before the day limited for the operative commencement of the French repeal, must maintain, that, if neither of them should be performed before that day, the decrees were not to be revoked, and consequently that, as neither of them has been so performed, the decrees are still in force.

If this hypothesis of previous conditions, thus reduced to the only shape it can assume, be proved to be unsound, my construction is at once established; since it is only upon that hypothesis that any doubt can be raised against the exact and perspicuous assurances that the decrees were actually repealed, and that the repeal would become effectual on the 1st of November. This hypothesis is proved to be unsound by the following considerations-It has clearly no foundation in the phraseology of the paper, which does not contain a syllable to put any condition before the repeal. The repeal is represented as a step already taken, to have effect on a day specified. Certain consequences are, indeed, declared to be expected from this proceeding; but no day is given, either expressly or by inplication, within which they are to happen. It is not said "bien entendu que les Anglois auront revoque," &c. but" que les Anglois revoqueront, &c. indefinitely as to time. The notion of conditions precedent is, therefore, to say the least of it, perfectly gratuitous; but it is also absurd. It drives us to the conclusion, that a palpable and notorious impossi bility was intended to be prescribed as a condition, in a paper which they, who think it was meant to deceive, must ad

VOL. IX.

mit was meant to be plausible. It was a palpable and notorious impossibility that the United States should, before the 1st of November, execute any condition, no matter what the nature of it, the performance of which was to follow the ascertained failure of a condition, to be executed by Great Britain, at any time before the same 1st of November. That the act expected from the United States was to be consequent upon the failure of the other is apparent. It is also apparent that upon any interpretation, which would make the act of Great Britain a condition precedent to the French repeal, consequently precedent to the 1st of November (when the repeal was, if ever, to take effect,) that condition could not be said to have failed before the whole period, from the 5th of August to the 1st of November, had elapsed. But if Great Britain had the whole time within which to elect the course which she would pursue, what opportunity would be left to the United States (equally bound, upon this idea of conditions precedent, to act their part within the same period) to become acquainted with that election, and to decide upon and take their own course in consequence; to say nothing of the transmission of such intelligence of it to Europe as would be indispensable to the efficacy of the conditional revocation.

This general view would alone be sufficient to discredit the arbitrary construction under consideration: but it will be more completely exposed by an explanation of the nature of the act, which the letter professes to expect from the United States, in case Great Britain should omit to revoke. This act is the revival of the non-intercourse law against England; France remaining exempt from it, as well as from the provisions of the subsequent law, commonly called the non-intercourse act. Now, it is too plain upon the face of the last mentioned law (to which the letter expressly refers) to escape the most negligent and unskilful observer, that this revival could not by any industry or chance be accomplished before the time fixed for the cessation of the French decrees, or even for a considerable time afterwards; it certainly cannot be allowable to assume, that the revival was required by the letter, (whatever was the object of the writer or his government) to precede the cessation. And if this was not required, it is incon

trovertible that the 'cessation would by the term of the letter, take place on the appointed day, whether any of the events disjunctively specified had intervened or

not.

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The first step towards the revival of the non-intercourse against England would be the proclamation of the President, that France had so revoked or modified her edicts, that they ceased to violate the neutral commerce of the United States. But the letter of Mons. Champagny left the decrees as it found them up to the 1st of November; and, consequently, up to that day it could not, for any thing contained in that letter be said that the rights of American commerce were no longer infringed by them. A prospective proclamation, that they would cease to violate those rights, might perhaps be issued; but it could scarcely have any substantial operation, either in favour of France, or to the prejudice of England, until the epoch to which it had looked had arrived. Let it be admitted, however, that all physical and legal ob stacles to the issuing, before the first of November, of a proclamation, to take effect immediately, were out of the way. How would such a proceeding fulfil of itself the expectation that the United States would, before the 1st of November, cause their rights to be respected by the English," in the mode pointed out by the letter, namely, by the enforcement of the non-intercourse law? The proclamation would work no direct or immediate consequence against England. Three months from its date must pass away before the non-intercourse law could revive against her; and when it did so, the revival would not be the effect of the proclamation, but of the continued adherence of England to her obnoxious system. Thus, even if a proclamation, effectual from its date, had been issued by the President on the day when the French declaration of repeal came to the hands of the American minister at Paris, the intercourse between the United States and Great Britain would, on the 1st of November, have remained in the same condition in which it was found in August. As all this was well understood by the government of France, the conclusion is, that its minister, professing too to have the American law before him, and to expect only what was conformable with that law, did not intend to require the revival of the non-intercourse against England as a

condition to be performed before the first of November. It is worthy of remark, as introductory to another view of this subject, that even they who conclude that the repeal of the French decrees has failed, are not backward to ascribe to the French declaration a purpose utterly inconsistent with that conclusion. They suppose the purpose to have been to affect the existing relations between America and England, by the only means which the declaration states the act of non-intercourse. And it is certain, that unless England should abandon particular parts of her system, this was the result avowedly in view, and meant to be accomplished.-But there could be no hope of such a result without a previous effectual relinquishment of the French decrees. A case could not otherwise be made to exist (as the Duke of Cadore was aware) for such an operation of the American law. To pass the law before the revocation of the edicts were impossible. With the law in his hands, it would have been miraculous ignorance not to know that it was the exact reverse of this which his paper must propose. He would derive this knowledge not from that particular law only but from the whole tenour and spi rit of American proceedings, in that painful anomalous dilemma, in which Great Britain and France, agreeing in nothing else, had recently combined to place the maritime interests of America. He would collect from these proceedings, that, while those conflicting powers continued to rival each other in their aggression on neutral rights, the government of the United States would oppose itself impartially to both. The French declaration, then, had either no meaning at all, or it meant to announce to Gen. Armstrong a positive revocation of the French edicts.

I should only fatigue your lordship by pursuing farther a point so plain and simple. I shall, therefore, merely add to what I have already said on this branch of the subject, that the Strong and unqualified communication from General Armstrong to me, mentioned in the commencement of this letter, and corroborated by subsequent communica tions, (one of which I now lay before you) may, perhaps, without any great effort of courtesy, be allowed to contam "that authentic intelligence" which your lordship is in search of He could scarcely have been free from doubt, if

the occasion was calculated to suggest it, and, if he had actually doubted, would hardly have spoken to me with the confidence of conviction.

It only remains to speak of the practical effect of the French repeal. And here your lordship must suffer me to remind you, that the orders of England of 1807 did not wait for the practical effect of the Berlin decree, nor linger till the obscurity in which the meaning of that decree was supposed to be involved, should be cleared away by time or explanation. They came promptly after the decree itself, while it was not only ambiguous but inoperative, and raised upon an idle prohibition, and a yet more idle declaration, which France had not attempted to enforce, and was notoriously incapable of enforcing, a vast scheme of oppression upon the seas, more destructiue of all the acknowledged rights of peaceful states than history can parallel. This retaliation, as it was called, was so rapid, that it was felt before the injury which was said to have provoked it; and yet that injury, such as it was, was preceded by the practical assertion on the part of Great Britain, of new and alarming principles of public law, in the notification of the blockade of May, 1806, and in the judicial decisions of the year before. To uphold the retaliatory orders, every thing was presumed with a surprising facility. Not only was an impotent, unexecuted, and equi vocal menace presumed to be an active Scourge of the commerce of neutral nations, but the acquiescense of those nations was presumed against the plainest evidence of facts. The alacrity with which all this was done can never be remembered without regret and astonishment; but our regret and astonishment must encrease, if after some years have been given to the pernicious innovation which these presumptions were to introduce and support, something like the same alacrity should not be displayed on seizing an honourable opportunity of discharging it for ever. It is not unnatural to imagine that it will be discharged with pleasure when it is considered, that having never been effectual as an instrument of hostility, it cannot now lay claim to those other recommendations for which it may have heretofore been prized. The orders in council [of November] have passed through some important changes; but they have been steady, as long as it was possible, to the

purpose which first impressed upon

them a character not to be mistaken.→→ In their original plan they comprehended not only France and such allied or dependent powers as had adopted the edict of Berlin, but such other nations as had merely excluded from their ports the commercial flag of England. This prodigious expansion of the system was far beyond any intelligible standard of retaliation; but it soon appeared that neutrals might be permitted to traffic, under certain restrictions, with all these different nations, provided they would submit, with a dependence truly colonial, to carry on their trade through British ports, and to pay such duties as the British government should think fit to impose, and such charges as British agents and other British subjects might be content to make. The United States abstained from this traffic, in which they could not embark without dishonour and in 1809 the system shrunk to narrower dimensions, and took the appearance of an absolute prohibition of all commercial intercourse with France, Holland, and the kingdom of Italy.

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The prohibition was absolute in appearance, but not in fact. It had lost something of former exuberance, but nothing of former pliancy; and in the event was soon to yield to the demands of one trade, while it prevented every other controuled and relaxed and mangled by licenses, it did not, after a brief exhibition of impartial sternness, affect to "distress the enemy" by the occlusion of his ports, when the commerce of England could advantageously find its way to them--at length, however, this convenience seems to be enjoyed no longer; and the orders in council may apparently be now considered (if indeed they ought not always to have been considered) as affecting England with a loss as heavy as that which they inflict on those whose rights they violated. In such circumstances, if it be too much to expect the credulity of 1807, it may yet be hoped that the evidence of the prac tical effect of the French repeal need not be very strong to be satisfactory. It is, however, as strong as the nature of such a case will admit; as a few observations will shew.On such an occasion it is no paradox to say, that the want of evidence is itself evidence. That certain decrees are not in force is proved by the absence of such facts as would appear if they were in force. Every motive which can be conjectured to have led to the repeal of the edicts, invites us

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