STATE PAPERS. 



427 



that the French repeal, besides 

 includin<>' that portion of the de- 

 crees which operates within a ter- 

 ritorial jurisdiction, as well as that 

 which operates on the high seas 

 against the commerce of the United 

 States, should not be a single spe- 

 cial repeal in relation to the United 

 States, but should be extended to 

 whatever other neutral nations un- 

 connected with them may be af- 

 fected by tho-e decrees. 



And as an additional insult, they 

 are called on for a formal disavowal 

 of conditions and pretensions ad- 

 vanced by the French government, 

 for which the United States are so 

 for fpom having been themselves 

 responsible, that, in official expla- 

 nations which have been published 

 to the world, and in a correspond- 

 ence of the American minister at 

 London with the British minister 

 for foreign affairs, such a respon- 

 sibility was explicitly and empha- 

 tically disclaimed. 



It has become, indeed, suffi- 

 ciently certain that the commerce 

 of the United States is to be sacri- 

 ficed, not as interfering with the 

 belligerent rights of Great Britain 

 — not as supplying the wants of 

 their enemies, which she herself 

 supplies — but as interfering with 

 the monopoly which she covets for 

 her own commerce and navigation. 

 She carries on a war against the 

 lawful commerce of a friend, that 

 she may tlie better carry on a 

 commerce with an enemy, — a 

 commerce polluted by the forgeries 

 and perjuries which are for the 

 most part the only passports by 

 which it can succeed. 



Anxious to make every experi- 

 ment short of the last resort of in- 

 jured nations, the United States 

 nave withheld from Great Britain, 



under successive modifications, the 

 benefits of a free intercourse with 

 their market, the loss of which 

 could not but outweigh the profits 

 accruing from her restrictions of 

 our commerce with other nations. 

 And to entitle those experiments 

 to the more favourable considera- 

 tion, they were so framed as to 

 enable her to place her adversary 

 under the exclusive operation of 

 them. To these appeals her go- 

 vernment has been equally inflexi- 

 ble, as if willing to make sacrifices 

 of every sort, rather than yield to 

 the claims of justice, or renounce 

 the errors of a false pride. Nay, 

 so far were the attempts carried to 

 overcome the attachment of the 

 British cabinet to its unjust edicts, 

 that it received every encourage- 

 ment, within the competency of 

 the executive branch of our go- 

 vernment, to expect that a repeal 

 of them would be followed by a 

 war between the United States and 

 France, unless the French edicts 

 should also be repealed. Even this 

 communication, although silencing 

 forever the plea of a disposition in 

 the United States to acquiesce in 

 those edicts, originally the sole 

 plea for them, received no atten- 

 tion. 



If no other proof existed of a 

 predetermination of the British 

 government against a repeal of its 

 orders, it might be found in the 

 correspondence of the minister 

 plenipotentiary of the United States 

 at London, and the British secretary 

 for foreign affairs in 1810, on the 

 question whether the blockade of 

 May, 1806, was considered in force 

 or as not in force. It had been 

 ascertained that the French go- 

 vernment, which urged this block- 

 ade as the ground of its decree, 



was 



