4.26 



ANNUAL REGISTER, 1812. 



force, and sometimes without the 

 practicability of applying one, our 

 commerce has been plundered in 

 everj' sea ; the great staples of our 

 country have been cut off from 

 their legitimate markets ; and a 

 destructive blov? aimed at our 

 agricultural and maritime interests. 

 In aggravation to these predatory 

 measures, they have been consi- 

 dered as in force from the dates of 

 their notification ; a retrospective 

 effect being thus added, as has 

 been done in other important cases, 

 to the unlawfulness of the course 

 pursued : and to render the out- 

 rage more signal, these mock 

 blockades have been reiterated and 

 enforced in the face of official 

 communications from the British 

 government, declaring, as the true 

 definition of a legal blockade, 

 *' that particular ports must be 

 actually invested, and previous 

 warning given to vessels bound to 

 them not to enter." 



Not content with these occa- 

 fiional expedients for laying waste 

 our neutral trade, the cabinet of 

 Great Britain resorted, at length, 

 to the sweeping system of block- 

 ades, under the names of orders 

 in council, which has been mould- 

 ed and managed as might best suit 

 its political views, its commercial 

 jealousies, or the avidity of British 

 cruisers. 



To our remonstrances against the 

 complicated and transcendant in- 

 justice of this innovation, the first 

 reply was, that the orders were re- 

 luctantly adopted by Great Britain 

 as a necessary retaliation on de- 

 crees of her enemy proclaiming a 

 general blockade of the British 

 isles, at a time when the naval 

 force of the enemy dared not to 

 issue from his own ports. She 



was reminded without effect, that 

 her own prior blockades, unsup- 

 ported by an adequate naval force 

 actually applied and continued, 

 were a bar to this plea ; that exe- 

 cuted edicts against millions of 

 our property could not be retalia- 

 tion on edicts confessedly impossi- 

 ble to be executed ; that retaliation, 

 to be just, should fall on the party 

 setting the guilty example, not on 

 an innocent party, which was not 

 even chargeable with an acquies- 

 cence in it. 



When deprived of this flimsy 

 veil for a prohibition of our trade 

 with great Britain, her cabinet, 

 instead of a corresponding repeal, 

 or a practical discontinuance of its 

 orders, formally avowed a deter- 

 mination to persist in them against 

 the United States, until the mar- 

 kets of her enemy should be laid 

 open to British products ; thus 

 asserting an obligation on a neutral 

 power to require one belligerent 

 to encourage, by its internal regu- 

 lations, the trade of another belli- 

 gerent ; contradicting her own 

 practice towards all nations in 

 peace as well as in war ; and be- 

 traying the insincerity of those 

 professions which inculcated a be- 

 lief, that, having resorted to her 

 orders with reget, she was anxious 

 to find an occasion for putting an 

 end to them. 



Abandoning still more all respect 

 for the neutral rights of the United 

 States, and for its own consistency, 

 the British government now de- 

 mands as pre-requisites to a repeal 

 of its orders, as they relate to the 

 United States, that a formality 

 should be observed in the repeal of 

 the French decrees nowise neces- 

 sary to their termination, nor ex- 

 emplified by British usage; and 



that 



