Had the French decrees originally afforded an adequate foundation for the British orders, and been continued after these reports in their full force and extent, surely, during a period in which above a hundred American vessels and their cargoes have fallen a prey to these orders, some one solitary instance of capture and confiscation must have happened under these decrees. That no such instance has happened, incontrovertibly proves, either that those decrees are of themselves harmless, or that they had been repealed; and in either case they afford no rightful plea or pretext to Great Britain for those measures of pretended retaliation, whose sole effect is to lay waste the neutral commerce of America.

With the remnant of those decrees which is still in force, and which consists of municipal regulations confined in their operation within the proper and undeniable jurisdiction of the states where they are executed, the United States have no concern, nor do they acknowledge themselves to be under any political obligation, either to examine into the ends proposed to be attained by this surviving portion of the continental system, or to oppose their accomplishment. Whatever may be intended to be done in regard to other nations by this system, cannot be imputed to the United States; nor are they to be made responsible, while they religiously observe the obligations of their neutrality, for the mode in which belligerent nations may choose to exercise their power for the injury of each other.

When, however, these nations exceed the just limits of their power, by the invasion of the rights of peaceful states on the ocean, which is subject to the common and equal jurisdistion of all nations, the United States cannot remain indifferent, and by quietly consenting to yield up their share of this jurisdiction, abandon their maritime rights. France has respected these rights by the discontinuance of her edicts on the high seas, leaving no part of these edicts in operation to the injury of the United States, and of course no part in which they can be supposed to acquiesce, or against which they can be required to contend.

They ask of Great Britain, by a like respect for their rights, to exempt them from the operation of her orders in council. Should such exemption involve the total practical extinction of these orders, it will only prove that they were exclusively applied to the commerce of the United States, and that they had not a single feature of resemblance to the decrees against which they are professed to retaliate.

It is with patience and confidence that the United States have expected this exemption, to which they believe themselves en

titled by all those considerations of right and promise, which I have here feebly stated to your lordship. With what disappointment, therefore, must they learn, that Great Britain, in professing to do away their dissatisfaction, explicitly avows her intention to persevere in her orders in council, until some authentic act, hereafter to be promulgated by the French government, shall declare the Berlin and Milan decrees to be expressly and unconditionally repealed? To obtain such an act, can the United States interfere? Would such an interference be compatible either with a sense of justice, or with what is due to their own dignity? Can they be expected to falsify the repeated declarations of their satisfaction with the act of the 5th of August, 1810, confirmed by abundant evidence of its subsequent observance; and, by now affecting to doubt of the sufficiency of that act, to demand another, which, in its form, its mode of publication, and its import, shall accord with the requisitions of Great Britain? And can it be supposed that the French government would listen to such a proposal, made under such circumstances, and with such a view?

While, therefore, I can perceive no reason, in the report of the French minister of the tenth of March, to believe that the United States erroneously assumed the repeal of the French decrees to be complete in relation to them; while aware that the condition, on which the revocation of the orders in council is now distinctly made to depend, is the total repeal of both the Berlin and Milan decrees, instead, as formerly, of the Berlin decree only; and while I feel that to ask the performance of this condition from others, is inconsistent with the honour of the United States, and to perform it themselves, beyond their power, your lordship will permit me frankly to avow, that I cannot accompany the communication to my government, of the declaration and order in council of the twenty-first of this month, with any felicitation on the prospect which this measure presents of an accelerated return of amity and mutual confidence between the two states.

It is with real pain that I make to your lordship this avowal, and I will seek still to confide in the spirit, which your lordship in your note, and in the conversation of this morning, has been pleased to say actuated the councils of his royal highness in relation to America, and still to cherish a hope that this spirit will lead, upon a review of the whole ground, to measures of a nature better calculated to attain its object; and that this object will no longer be made to depend on the conduct of a third power, or upon contingencies on which the United States have

no controul, but alone upon the rights of the United States, the justice of Great Britain, and the common interests of both.

I have the honour to be, my lord, your lordship's most obedient servant,

(Signed)

JONA. RUSSELL.

Extract of a letter from Mr. Russell to Mr. Monroe. London, 1st May, 1812. The declaration and order in council of the 21st ultimo, not only mark with the utmost precision the line of policy which the present ministry means inflexibly to pursue towards the United States, but confirm my conjectures in relation to the instructions lately sent to Mr. Foster, by the Mackerel. I have learnt, from a respectable source, that lord Sidmouth has declared, in reference to his attempt for a modification of the orders, that these measures were all that he could obtain. I wonder much how his lordship can suppose that in them he has obtained any thing.

I have not yet received any reply to my note to lord Castlereagh of the 25th ultimo.

Sir,

Mr. Russell to Mr. Monroe.

London, 9th May, 1812. I have the honour to hand you herewith a note from lord Castlereagh of the third of this month, acknowledging the receipt of that which I addressed to his lordship on the 25th ulti

mo.

(Signed)

I am sir, &c. &c. &c.

JONA. RUSSELL.

The undersigned, his majesty's principal secretary for foreign affairs, has the honour to acknowledge the receipt of Mr. Russell's note of the 25th ultimo, in reply to that of the undersigned, dated the 21st, transmitting the declaration published on that day by order of his royal highness the prince regent, acting in the name and on the behalf of his majesty.

The undersigned cannot but express his sincere regret that the measure in question should have failed to produce a more favourable impression on Mr. Russell's mind. As his majesty's minister in America has been fully instructed to explain to the American government the motives which have influenced his majest's government upon this occasion, the undersigned is commanded by the prince regent to abstain at present from entering into a discussion of those arguments against the decla

ration, which Mr. Russell has deemed it expedient to bring forward in his note of the 25th.

The undersigned avails himself of this opportunity of renewing to Mr. Russell the assurances of his great consideration.

(Signed)

Foreign Office, 3d May, 1812.

CASTLEREAGH.

British Order in Council of the 23d June, 1812, with the correspondence relating thereto.

[These papers have heretofore been laid before congress, but they are again submitted, as they have a relation to the report now made.]

Sir,

Mr. Russell to Mr. Monroe.

London, 26th June, 1812, I have the honour to transmit to you, enclosed, an order in council issued by this government, on the 23d of this month, and copies of two notes from lord Castlereagh of the same date, accompanying the communication of it to me, and also a copy of my note to him, of this day, in reply.

I

can but regret that in this document any reservation has been made of a power of restoring the orders of the 7th of January, 1807, and of the 26th of April, 1809, to their full ef fect, whenever it shall be judged expedient so to do, as such reservation manifests an intention to maintain the principle on which they were founded, and in which I conceive the United States can never acquiesce.

Had this reservation not been made, the revocation of those orders would, perhaps, accompanied as it is with the verbal explanations of lord Castlereagh, alluded to in my note to him, have been considered to be as precise and complete as could reasonably, under every view of the subject, have been expected.

The reservation itself, although ungracious in appearance, will, I trust, prove harmless in effect, and, I presume, this government will be long deterred by its experience, from carrying into practice a principle to which it appears to be determined so ostentatiously to adhere in the abstract.

I am, with great consideration and respect, sir, your faithful and obedient servant,

JONA. RUSSELL.

(Copy.) Sir,

Lord Castlereagh to Mr. Russell.

Foreign Office, June 23d, 1812. I am commanded by the prince regent to transmit to you for your information, the enclosed printed copy of an order in council, which his royal highness, acting in the name and on the behalf of his majesty, was this day pleased to issue, for the revocation (on the conditions therein specified) of the orders in council of the 7th of January, 1807, and of the 26th of April, 1809, so far as may regard American vessels and their cargoes, being American property, from the first of August next. I have the honour to be, with great consideration, sir, your most obedient humble servant,

(Signed)

(Copy.) Sir,

CASTLEREAGH.

Lord Castlereagh to Mr. Russell.

Foreign Office, June 23d, 1812.

In communicating to your government the order in council of this date, revoking (under certain conditions therein specified) those of January 7th, 1807, and of April 26th, 1809, I am to request that you will at the same time acquaint them, that the prince regent's ministers have taken the earliest opportunity, after their resumption of the government, to advise his royal highness to the adoption of a measure grounded upon the document communicated by you to this office on the 20th ultimo ; and his royal highness hopes that this proceeding on the part of the British government, may accelerate a good understanding on all points of difference between the two states.

I shall be happy to have the honour of seeing you at the foreign office at two o'clock to-morrow, and beg to apprize you that one of his majesty's vessels will sail for America with the despatches of the government, in the course of the present week.

I have the honour to be, with great consideration, sir, your most obedient humble servant,

(Signed)

CASTLEREAGH.

At the Court at Carlton House, the twenty-third of June, one thousand eight hundred and twelve.

PRESENT,

His royal highness the prince regent in council. Whereas his royal highness the prince regent was pleased to declare, in the name and on the behalf of his majesty, on the