sing around us, and we have returned for answer, that whosoever listened to the advice of the Prophet or his followers, would be destroyed by the American people.”

MESSAGE

FROM THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES TO CONGRESS. JUNE 15, 1812.

I TRANSMIT, for the information of Congress, copies of letters which have passed between the Secretary of State and the envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary of Great Britain.

JAMES MADISON.

Mr. Foster to Mr. Monroe. Washington, June 10, 1812.

SIR,

IT has been extremely satisfactory to me to find by your letter dated June 6th, which I had the honour to receive yesterday morning, that it was not the wish of the American government to close all further discussion relative to the important question at issue between the two countries. I beg you to be assured, sir, that it never was my intention, in alluding to my letters which had remained without answer at your office, to use any expressions which could, in the most remote manner, contain any thing personal. I shall ever be ready, with pleasure, to bear testimony to that frankness, candour and good temper, which so eminently distinguish you, and have been acknowledged to belong to you, by all who have ever had the honour to discuss with you any questions of publick

interest.

But, sir, although you were not backward in entering into full explanations with me verbally, I could not but feel, particularly as I had just had communications to make to you of the greatest importance, that I had a right

to expect from you a written reply to them; and while I remembered that two of my former notes were still unanswered, the one written three months ago, containing, among other important topicks, a particular question which I was expressly instructed to put to you, as to whether you could point to any publick act, on the part of the French government, by which they had really revoked their decrees, and the other furnishing strong evidence of the continued existence of those very decrees; also, when I perceived that my note, communicating the duke of Bassano's report, which you knew was to be sent to you on the 1st inst. was not waited for, but that a message was transmitted by the executive to Congress, which it seems contained a reference to an insulated passage in the despatch on which my note was founded, that if taken unconnected with what preceded or followed it, might be liable to misconstruction, I could not avoid apprehending that no means of further explanation might be left open to me.

I beg you to be assured, sir, that if I was embarrassed by your demands of an explanation as to what appeared to you to be a difference between lord Castlereagh's despatch, communicated to you, and my note, it arose from the novelty of the demand, that seemed to involve an informality of proceeding in which I could not feel myself justified in acquiescing. Had you in making a reply to my communication, asked me how far a repeal of the French decrees was demanded by my government, and as to whether a special repeal as far as respected America, would be sufficient, I should have had no hesitation in giving you every satisfaction.

Your note of the 6th instant has, by showing that the door was not absolutely shut to a continuation of our discussion, relieved me from further difficulty on this point.

I have no hesitation, sir, in saying that Great Britain, as the case has hitherto stood, never did, nor ever could engage, without the grossest injustice to herself and her allies as well as to other neutral nations, to repeal her orders as affecting America alone, leaving them in force against other states, upon condition that France would except

singly and specially, America from the operation of her decrees. You will recolleet, sir, that the orders in council are measures of defence, directed against the system contained in those decrees; that it is a war of trade which is carried on by France; that what you call the municipal regulations of France, have never been called municipal by France herself, but are her main engines in that novel and monstrous system. It cannot then be expected that Great Britain should renounce her efforts to throw back upon France the evils with which she menaces Great Britain, merely because France might seek to alleviate her own situation, by waving the exercise of that part of her system which she cannot enforce.

But, sir, to what purpose argue upon a supposed case, upon a state of things not likely to occur, since the late report and senatus consultum which have been published to the world, as it were insultingly in the face of those who would contend that any repeal whatever had taken place of the decrees in question.

You draw a comparison between the mode in which this instrument bas appeared, and that which you call the high evidence of the repeal as stated in M. Champagny's note; and it would almost seem as if you considered the latter as the most authentick of the two; but, sir, you cannot seriously contend that the duke of Bassano's report, with the senatus consultum accompanying it, published in the official paper of Paris, is not a very different instrument from the above letter, offering a mere provisional repeal of the decrees, upon conditions utterly inadmissible, conditions too, which really formed of themselves a question of paramount importance.

The condition then demanded, and which was brought forward so unexpectedly, was a repeal of the blockade of May, 1806, which Mr. Pinkney, in the letter you have referred me to, declared to have been required by America as indispensable in the view of her acts of intercourse and non-intercourse, as well as a repeal of other blockades of a similar character which were maintained by Great Britain to be founded on strict maritime right.

The conditions now annexed to the French demand are much more extensive, and, as I have shown, include a surrender of many other of the most established principles of ́the publick law of nations.

I cannot, I confess, see upon what ground you contend that the report of the duke of Bassano affords no proof against any partial repeal of the French decrees. The principles advanced in that report are general; there is no exception made in favour of America; and in the correspondence of Mr. Barlow, as officially published, he seems to allow that he had no explanation respeeting it. How ean it, therefore, be considered in any other light than as a republication of the decrees themselves, which, as it were, to take away all grounds for any doubt, expressly advances a doctrine that can only put in practice on the high seas, namely, "that free ships shall make free goods," since the application of such a principle to vessels in port is absolutely rejected under his continental system.

It is, indeed, impossible to see how, under such circumstances, America can call upon Great Britain to revoke her orders in council. It is impossible that she can revoke them at this moment, in common justice to herself and to her allies; but, sir, while under the necessity of continuing them, she will be ready to manage their exercise, so as to alleviate, as much as possible, the pressure upon America; and it would give me great pleasure to confer with you at any time upon the most advisable manner of producing that effect.

I have the honour to be, &c. &c.

(Signed)

Hon. JAMES MONROE, &C.

AUG. J. FOSTER.

Mr. Monroe to Mr. Foster. Department of State, June

SIR,

13, 1812.

I AM not aware that any letter of yours, on any subject, on which the final decision of this government had not been communicated to you, has been suffered to remain without a prompt and written answer. And even in the

cases thus supposed to have been settled, which you thought proper to revive, although no favourable change had taken place in the policy or measures of your government, I have never failed to explain to you, informally, in early interviews, the reasons which made it imperiously the duty of the United States to continue to afford to their rights and interests all the protection in their power. The acknowledgment of this, on your part, was due to the frankness of the communications which have passed between us on the highly important subjects on which we have treated, and I am happy to find by your letter of the 10th instant, that, in relying on it, I have not been disappointed.

The impropriety of the demand made by your government of a copy of the instrument or instructions given by the French government to its cruisers, after the repeal of the Berlin and Milan decrees, was sufficiently shown in Mr. Pinkney's letter to the marquis of Wellesley of the 10th of December,1810, and in my letters to you of 23d July, 1811, and 14th January last. It was for this reason that I thought it more suitable to refer you to those letters, for the answer to that demand, than to repeat it in a formal communication.

It excites, however, no small surprise that you should continue to demand a copy of that instrument, or any new proof of the repeal of the French decrees, at the very time that you declare that the proof which you demand, in the extent to which we have a right to claim the repeal, would not, if afforded, obtain a corresponding repeal of the orders in council. This demand is the more extraordinary, when it is considered that since the repeal of the decrees, as it respects the United States, was announced, your government has enlarged its pretensions, as to the conditions on which the orders in council should be repealed, and even invigorated its practice under them.

It is satisfactory to find that there has been no misapprehension of the condition, without which your government refuses to repeal the orders in council. You admit that to obtain their repeal, in respect to the United States, the repeal of the French decrees must be absolute and un