In answering that letter, it is proper that I should notice a complaint that I had omitted to reply in mine of the 23d of July, to your remonstrance against the proclamation of the President, of November last, and to the demand which you had made, by order of your government, of the repeal of the non-importation act of March 2d, of the present year. My letter has certainly not merited this imputation.

Having shewn the injustice of the British government in issuing the Orders in Council on the pretext assigned, and its still greater injustice in adhering to them after that pretext had failed, a respect for Great-Britain, as well as for the United States, prevented my placing in the strong light in which the subject naturally presented itself, the remonstrance alluded to, and the extraordinary demand founded on it, that while your government accommodated in nothing, the United States should relinquish the ground, which by a just regard to the public rights and honor, they had been compelled to take. Propositions tending to degrade a nation, can never be brought into discussion by a government, not prepared to submit to the degradation. It was for this reason that I confined my reply to those passages in your letter, which involved the claim of the United States, on the principles of justice, to the revocation of the Orders in Council. Your demand, however, was neither unnoticed or unanswered. In laying before you the complete, and as was believed, irresistible proof on which the United States expected, and called for the revocation of the Orders in Council, a very explicit answer was supposed to be given to that demand.

Equally unfounded is your complaint that I misunderstood that passage, which claimed as a condition of the revocation of the Orders in Council, that the trade of GreatBritain with the continent, should be restored to the state in which it was before the Berlin and Milan Decrees were issued. As this pretension was novel and extraordinary, it was necessary that a distinct idea should be formed of it, and with that view, I asked such an explanation as would enable me to form one.

In the explanation given, you do not insist on the right to trade in British property, with British vessels, directly with your enemies. Such a claim, you admit, would be preposerous. But you do insist by necessary implication, that

France has no right to inhibit the importation into her ports of British manufactures, of the produce of the British soil, when the property of neutrals; and that, until France removes that inhibition, the United States are to be cut off by Great-Britain from all trade whatever, with her enemies.

On such a pretension it is almost impossible to reason. There is, I believe, no example of it in the history of past wars. Great-Britain, the enemy of France, undertakes to regulate the trade of France; nor is that all; she tells her that she must trade in British goods. If France and GreatBritain were at peace, this pretension would not be set up, nor even thought of. Has Great-Britain then acquired in this respect by war, rights which she has not in peace? And does she announce to neutral nations, that unless they consent to become the instruments of this policy, their commerce shall be annihilated, and their vessels shall be shut up in their own ports?

I might ask whether French goods are admitted into Great-Britain, even in peace, and if they are, whether it be of right, or by the consent and policy of the British government ?

That the property would be neutralized does not effect the question. If the United States have no right to carry their own productions into France without the consent of the French government, how can they undertake to carry there those of Great-Britain? In all cases it must depend on the interest and the will of the party.

Nor is it material to what extent, or by what powers, the trade of the continent is prohibited. If the powers who prohibit it, are at war with Great-Britain, the prohibition is a necessary consequence of that state. If at peace, it is their own act; and whether it be voluntary, or compulsive, they alone are answerable for it. If the act be taken at the instigation and under the influence of France, the most that can be said, is, that it justifies reprisal against them, by a similar measure. On no principle whatever can it be said to give any sanction to the conduct of Great-Britain towards neutral nations.

The United States can have no objection to the employment of their commercial capital in the supply of France, and of the continent generally, with manufactures, and to comprise in the supply those of Great-Britain, provided

those powers will consent to it. But they cannot undertake to force such supplies on France or on any other power, in compliance with the claim of the British government, on principles incompatible with the rights of every independent nation, and they will not demand in favor of another power, what they cannot claim for themselves.

All that Great-Britain could with reason complain of, was the inhibition by the French Decrees, of the lawful trade of neutrals, with the British dominions. As soon as that inhibition ceased, her inhibition of our trade with France ought in like manner to have ceased. Having pledged herself to proceed pari pussu with France, in the revocation of their respective acts, violating neutral rights, it has afforded just cause of complaint, and even of astonishment, to the United States, that the British government should have sanctioned the seizure and condemnation of American vessels under the Orders in Council after the revocation of the French Decrees, was announced, and even in the very moment when your mission, avowed to be conciliatory, was to have its effect.

I will only add that had it appeared finally, that France had failed to perform her engagements, it might at least have been expected, that Great-Britain would not have molested such of the vessels of the United States as might be entering the ports of France, on the faith of both governments, till that failure was clearly proved.

To many insinuations in your letter I make no reply, because they sufficiently suggest the only one that would be proper.

If it were necessary to dwell on the impartiality which has been observed by the United States towards the two belligerents, I might ask, whether if Great-Britain had accepted the condition which was offered equally to her and France, by the act of May 1st, 1810, and France had rejected it, there is cause to doubt that the non-importation act would have been carried into effect against France? No such doubt can possibly exist, because in a former instance, when this government, trusting to a fulfilment by yours, of an arrangement which put an end to a non-intercourse with Great-Britain, the non-intercourse was continued against France, who had not then repealed her Decrees, as it was not doubted England had done. Has it not been repeat

edly declared to your government, that if Great-Britain would revoke her Orders in Council, the President would immediately cause the non-importation to cease? You well know that the same declaration has often been made to yourself, and that nothing more is wanting to the removal of the existing obstructions to the commerce between the two countries, than a satisfactory assurance, which will be received with pleasure from yourself, that the Orders in Council are at an end.

By the remark in your letter of the 3d of July, that the blockade of May, 1806, had been included in the more comprehensive system of the Orders in Council of the following year, and that, if that blockade should be continued in force after the repeal of the Orders in Council, it would be in consequence of the special application of a sufficient naval force, I could not but infer your idea to be, that the repeal of the Orders in Council would necessarily involve the repeal of the blockade of May. I was the more readily induced to make this inference, from the consideration that if the blockade was not revoked by the repeal of the Orders in Council, there would be no necessity for giving notice that it would be continued; as by the further consideration, that according to the decision of your court of admiralty, a blockade instituted by proclamation does not cease by the removal of the force applied to it, nor without a formal notice by the government to that effect.

It is not, however, wished to discuss any question relative to the mode by which that blockade may be terminated. Its actual termination is the material object for considera

tion.

It is easy to shew, and it has already been abundantly shown, that the blockade of May, 1806, is inconsistent on any view that may be taken of it with the law of nations. It is also easy to show that, as now expounded, it was equally inconsistent with the sense of your government, when the order was issued; and this change is a sufficient reply to the remarks which you have applied to me personally.

If you will examine the order, you will find that it is strictly, little more than a blockade of the coast from the Seine to Ostend. There is an express reservation in it in favor of neutrals to any part of the coast between Brest and

the Seine, and between Ostend and the Elbe. Neutral powers are permitted by it to take from their own ports every kind of produce without distinction as to its origin and to carry it to the continent under that limitation, and with the exception only of contraband of war, and enemy's property, and to bring thence to their own ports in return, whatever articles they think fit. Why were contraband of "war and enemy's property excepted, if a commerce even in those articles would not otherwise have been permitted under the reservation? No order was necessary to subject them to seizure. They were liable to it according to the law of nations, as asserted by Great-Britain.

Why then did the British government institute a blockade, which with respect to neutrals was not rigorous, as to the greater part of the coast comprised in it? If you will look to the state of things which then existed between the United States and Great-Britain, you will find the answer. A controversy had taken place between our governments on a different topic, which was still pending. The British government had interfered with the trade between France and her allies in the produce of their colonies. The just claim of the United States was then a subject of negotiation; and your government professing its willingness to make a satisfactory arrangement of it, issued the Order which allowed the trade, without making any concession as to the principle, reserving that for adjustment by treaty. It was in this light that I viewed, and in this sense that [ represented that order to my government; and in no other did I make any comment ou it.

When you reflect that this order by allowing the trade of neutrals, in colonial productions, to all that portion of the coast which was not rigorously blockaded, afforded to the United States an accommodation in a principal point then at issue between our governments, and of which their citizens extensively availed themselves that that trade and the question of blockade, and every other question in which the United States and Great-Britain were interested, were then in a train of amicable negotiation, you will, I think, see the cause why the minister who then represented the United States with the British government, did not make a formal complaint against it. You have appealed to me, who happened to be that minister, and urged my silence as an evi