prior blockade, unsupported by an adequate naval force actually applied and continued, were a bar to this plea that executed Edicts against millions of our property could not be retaliation on Edicts confessedly impossible 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 acquiescence in it,

When deprived of this flimsey veil for a prohibition of our trade with her enemy, by the repeal of his prohibition of our trade with G. Britain, her cabinet, instead of a corresponding repeal, or a practical discontinuance of its Orders, formally avowed a determination to persist in them against the U. States, until the markets 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 regulations, the trade of another belligerent; contradicting her own practice towards all nations in peace, as well as in war; and betraying the insincerity of those professions which inculcated a belief that, having resorted to her Orders with regret, she was anxious to find an occasion for putting an end to them.

Abandoning still more, all respect for the neutral rights of the U. States, and for its own consistency, the British government now demands 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 necessary to their termination, nor exemplified by British usage; and that the French repeal, besides including that portion of the Decrees which operates within a territorial jurisdiction, as well as that which operates on the high seas against the commerce of the U. States, should not be a single special repeal in relation to the U. States, but should be extended to whatever neutral nations unconnected with them, that may be affected by those Decrees. And as an additional insult, they are called on for a formal disavowal of the condition and pretensions advanced by the French government, for which the U. States are so far from having made themselves responsible, that, in official explanations, which have been published to the world, and in a correspondence of the American minister at London, with the British minister for foreign affairs, such a respon sibility was explicitly and emphatically disclaimed.

It has become indeed sufficiently certain that the commerce of the U. States is to be sacrificed, not as interfering with the belligerent rights of G. Britain, not as supplying the wants of her enemies, which she herself supplies, but as interfering with the monopoly which she coverts for her own -commerce and navigation. She carries on a war against the lawful commerce of a friend, that she may the 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 experiment short of the last resort of injured nations, the U. States have withheld from G. 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 these experiments to the more favorable consideration, they were so framed as to enable her to place her adversary under the exclusive operation of them. To these appeals, her government has been equally inflexible, 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 encouragement, within the competency of the Executive branch of our government, to expect that a repeal of them would be followed by a war between the U. States and France, unless the French Edicts should also be repealed. Even this communication, although silencing for ever the plea of a disposition in the U. States to acquiesce in those Edicts, originally the sole plea for them, received no attention.

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 U. States at London, and the British Secretary for Foreign Affairs in 1810, on the question whether the blockade of May, 1806, was considered as in force, or as not in force. It had been ascertained that the French gov ernment, which urged this blockade as the ground of its Berlin Decree, was willing, in the event of its removal, to repeal that Decree; which being followed by alternate re

peals of the other offensive Edicts, might abolish the whole system on both sides. This inviting opportunity for accom plishing an object so important to the U. States, and professed so often to be the desire of both the belligerents, was made known to the British government As that government admits that an actual application of an adequate force is necessary to the existence of a legal blockade ; and it was notorious, that if such a force had ever been applied, its long discontinuance had annulled the blockade in question, there could be no sufficient objection on the part of G. Britain to a formal revocation of it; and no imaginable ob jection to a declaration of the fact that the blockade did not exist. The declaration would have been consistent with her avowed principles of blockade, and would have enabled the U. States to demand from France the pledged repeal of her Decrees; either with success, in which case the way would have been opened for a general repeal of the belligerent Edicts; or without success, in which case the U. States would have been justified in turning their measures exclusively against France. The British government would, however, neither rescind the blockade, nor declare its nouexistence; nor permit its non-existence to be inferred and affirmed by the American Plenipotentiary. On the contrary, by representing the blockade to be comprehended in the Orders in Council, the U. States were compelled so to regard it in their subsequent proceedings.

There was a period when a favorable change in the policy of the British cabinet was justly considered as established. The minister Plenipotentiary of his Britannic majesty here proposed an adjustment of the differences more immediately endangering the harmony of the two countries. The proposition was accepted with a promptitude and cordiality, corresponding with the invariable professions of this government. A foundation appeared to be laid for a sincere and lasting reconciliation. The prospect, however, quickly vanished. The whole proceeding was disavowed by the British government, without any explanation which could at that time repress the belief, that the disavowal proceeded from a spirit of hostility to the commercial rights and prosperity of the U. States. And it has since come into proof, that at the very moment when the public minister was holding the language of friendship, and inspiring

confidence in the sincerity of the negociation with which he was charged, a secret agent of his government was employed in intrigues, having for their object a subversion of our government, and a dismemberment of our happy Union. In reviewing the conduct of G. Britain towards the U. States, our attention is necessarily drawn to the warfare just renewed by the savages on one of our extensive frontiers; a warfare, which is known to spare neither age nor sex, and to be distinguished by features peculiarly shocking to humanity. It is difficult to account for the activity and combinations, which have for some time been developing themselves among the tribes, in constant intercourse with British traders and garrisons, without connecting their hostility with that influence; and without recollecting the authenti cated examples of such interpositions, heretofore furnished by the officers and agents of that government.

Such is the spectacle of injuries and indignities which have been heaped on our country; and such the crisis which its unexampled forbearance and conciliatory efforts have not been able to avert. It might at least have been expected, that an enlightened nation, if less urged by moral obligations, or invited by friendly dispositions on the part of the U. States, would have found in its true interest alone, a sufficient motive to respect their rights, and their tranquility on the high seas; that an enlarged policy would have favored that free and general circulation of commerce, in which the British nation is at all times interested, and which in times of war is the best alleviation of its calamities to herself, as well as to other belligerents and more especially that the British cabinet would not, for the sake of a precarious and surreptitious intercourse with hostile markets, have persevered in a course of measures which necessarily put at hazard the invaluable market of a great and growing country, disposed to cultivate the mutual advantages of an active commerce.

Other Councils have prevailed. Our moderation and conciliation have had no other effect than to encourage perseverance, and to enlarge pretensions. We behold our seafaring citizens still the daily victims of lawless violence, committed on the great common highway of nations, even within sight of the country which owes them protection. We behold our vessels freighted with the products of our soil

and industry, or returning with the proceeds of them, wrested from their lawful destinations, confiscated by prize courts, no longer the organs of public law, but the instruments of arbitrary Edicts; and their unfortunate crews dispersed and lost, or forced or inveigled in British ports into British fleets; whilst arguments are employed, in support of these aggressions, which have no foundation but in a principle equally supporting a claim to regulate our external commerce in all cases whatsoever.

We behold, in fine, on the side of G. Britain, a state of war against the U. States, and on the side of the U. States a state of peace towards G. Britain.

Whether the U. States shall continue passive under these progressive usurpations, and these accumulating wrongs; or opposing force to force, in defence of their natural rights, shall commit a just cause into the hands of the Almighty disposer of events; avoiding all connections which might entangle it in the contests or views of other powers, and preserving a constant readiness to concur in an honorable re-establishment of peace and friendship, is a solemn question, which the constitution wisely confides to the legislative Department of the government. In recommending it to their early deliberations, I am happy in the assurance that the decision will be worthy the enlightened and patri etic Councils of a virtuous, a free, and a powerful nation.

Having presented this view of the relations of the U. States with G. Britain and of the solemn alternative grow ing out of them, I proceed to remark that the communications last made to Congress, on the subject of our relations with France, will have shown that since the revocation of her Decrees as they violated the neutral rights of the U. States, her government has authorised illegal captures, by its privateers and public ships, and that other outrages have been practised on our vessels and citizens. It will have been seen also, that no indemnity had been provided, or satisfactorily pledged, for the extensive spoliations committed under the violent and retrospective orders of the French government against the property of our citizens seized within the jurisdiction of France. I abstain at this time from recommending to the consideration of Congress definitive measures with respect to that nation, in the expectation, that the result of unclosed discussions between our Minister