A representation of the declaration of M. de Champagny was made without delay to Great Britain, accompanied with the assurances of all the diplomatic agents of the United States in France,* that no condemnations had taken place since the revocation, and a repeal of her orders was claimed on the ground, that they were only retaliatory. As a neutral nation, it could not signify to America what conditions France exacted from England; and on this particular occasion, America did not join with France, or any other nation in calling upon England to renounce her maritime principles. She invited that country to repeal orders, passed in retaliation of decrees, that France declared no longer to exist. But England resisted this application on the ground, that she was furnished with no evidence, the decrees had been rescinded; that the decree, affecting the repeal, had never been promulgated, that vessels were still captured and condemned under them, that she was not bound to be satisfied with the evidence that had satisfied a neutral power, and that conditions were exacted, which never could be complied with. It, certainly, is true, that no evidence of any decree could be found, nor was any decree promulgated till long after this period, but if Great Britain placed no reliance on the positive and direct declaration of the French Minister of Foreign Relations, no great value could have been attached to a decree. We have already said that Mr. Pinkney left England in the beginning of the year 1811. In February of the same year, A. J. Foster was appointed envoy to this country. He accomplished nothing. He was the last minister sent before the war, and remained till it was declared. In Novem * Barlow's Letter of March 2d, 1812. Russell's do. Russell's affidavit-Appendix. Arguments on the Snipe, p. 386, and following. † Mr. Foster protested against the possession of that portion of West Florida between the Perdido and the Mississippi in October 1810, but the American government refused to enter into a discussion on the subject, as that territory was the undoubted property of the United States. ber 1811, the government, however, accepted the terms proposed by Mr. Erskine in 1809, for the reparation of the wrongs done by the attack on the Chesapeake. They were in substance as follows: 1. That the British government disavowed the act of Admiral Berkeley. 2. Agreed to restore the men taken from the Chesapeake to such place as the American government should name. 3. A suitable pecuniary compensation to the families of the men killed in action and of the wounded. In May 1811, and at other times, til the 29th of July 1812, judgment was pronounced by Sir Wm. Scott, in the High Court of Admiralty, on the Fox, the Snipe, the Martha, the Vesta, and other American vessels, detained under the orders in council and brought to adjudication. sels were all condemned. the causes of this act. These ves It is not necessary to recapitulate The Court allowed full weight to the argument that the orders in council were retaliatory measures,* but as no decree had been passed or promulgated repealing the French decrees, the time had not arrived when that argument could be applied with the force that undoubtedly belonged to it. On the other hand it was remarked, that the fact of the repeal was notified to the American minister in Paris by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, and that the notification was published in the Moniteur, the official French paper, four days after the communication made to General Armstrong. In April 1812, the British government published a "declaration" on the orders in council. This state paper enters into a brief history of the events that led to the orders, and explains the terms upon which they would be repealed. The * Argument on the Snipe.—“For retaliatory orders they are, they are so declared in their own language, and in the uniform language of the Government which has established them. I have no hesitation in saying that they would cease to be just if they ceased to be retaliatory, and they would cease to be retaliatory from the moment the enemy retracts in a sincere manner his measure, on which they were intended to retaliate." following extract will show the sense they entertained, after a lapse of eighteen months of the proceedings of the imperial government, and of the representations of the American diplomatic agent concerning the French decrees: That if at any time hereafter the Berlin and Milan decrees shall by some authentic act of the French government, publicly promulgated, be expressly and unconditionally repealed, then and from thenceforth the order in council of the 7th day of January 1807, and the order in council of the 26th day of April 1809, shall without any further order be, and the same, hereby, are declared from thenceforth to be wholly and absolutely revoked." The decisions of the High Court of Admiralty and the declaration of April 1812, could leave no doubt of the construction put by the British government on the note of M. de Champagny. England did not consider the French decrees repealed. The nonimportation act had now been in operation more than a year, and there was no probability that the form of revocation pointed out in the state paper of April 1812, would take place. In this situation, the United States had two alternatives presented to its consideration, either of continuing that act in force, or of proceeding to a war with Great Britain. The government adopted the latter measure. War, having been preceded by an embargo of 90 days, was declared on the 18th of June of the same year. The American government, doubtless, supposed it offered all the evidence it ever could possess, that the French decrees were repealed; it never could have anticipated the extraordinary document of April 28th, 1811; communicated to its minister in Paris more than a year after it purported to have been passed; a decree not known in this country at the time the war was declared. Having already made some remarks on this instrument in a previous chapter, it is only necessary, in this place, to observe that the decree was communicated to the British ministry on the 20th of May 1812, and on the 23d of June the same year an order was issued, repealing the orders in council. The history of the war does not belong to the subject of this work. We shall, however, be permitted to remark, that many unfortunate circumstances accompanied the time and manner of its declaration, as well as the opening of the contest, which the spirit and gallantry of the people, in its progress and towards its close, well redeemed. Neutrality was so obviously the policy of the country, and the form of government seemed so ill adapted to a state of hostilities, that we cannot be surprised if every other expedient was first tried and exhausted. But the doctrine of neutrality, the ark of safety and prosperity to this people, a doctrine, that, in most cases, cannot be too highly commended, or too exactly maintained, was carried to an extreme degree of toleration; the restrictive system was not a successful one-it produced no effect on the belligerents. The country was wasting and perishing under it, and the passions of the political parties were inflamed to a dangerous degree. It would, perhaps, have been better that a war should have been declared in 1808, at the time of the report of a committee of the House of Representatives, already mentioned, on the foreign relations of the Republic. It would, we admit, have been an unusual thing to have declared war against two nations, at war with each other, but both were then actually engaged in hostilities with America; and, owing to the particular condition of one of them, a war with England appeared to be virtually a war with both. It should be recollected, too, that about that period, began the severest operation of the French decrees, the British orders, and of our own restrictive system. After 1808, to the restoration of peace in 1815, the commerce of the country was of comparatively trifling value; and in the language of the report of November, America had been compelled by the belligerents to abandon her right of freely navigating the ocean. A determined opposition was made to the war with England, but we believe that much, if not the greater part of it, arose from an apprehension it would lead to an alliance with France. It was extremely natural that this apprehension should be felt by one of the political parties, because an alleged preference for the measures of one of the belligerents, was the principal cause of opposition to the measures of our own government. The war was declared at a time when the French emperor was in the height, not only of his power, but of his prosperity; his armies had all passed the Vistula, in a rapid and victorious march for the capital of Russia, and he, himself, was in Poland employed in organizing that kingdom into a new confederation, of which he was to be the protector. But the correspondence of America with France at this period, and the unsatisfactory condition of the claims of the one government upon the other, clearly show, that no event was less likely to take place than an alliance between the two countries. We have, already, in the chapter on the continental system, presented an outline of the proceedings of the United States with France, just before and during the war of 1812, though it seems hardly necessary to remark, that the whole course of policy of this government from its foundation in 1789, nay, from the first year after the peace of '83, has been most sedulously to avoid every possible approach to alliances or connexions with the European nations. America, fortunately exonerated from the obligations of the treaty of '78, reaped, at an early hour, the full measure of all the experience that the pernicious consequences, with which she was threatened on that occasion, could give her. * Early in eighteen hundred and thirteen, the emperor of Russia offered his mediation to procure a cessation of hostilities between England and the United States. Russia, having made a treaty of peace and alliance with England, in the summer of eighteen hundred and twelve, the commerce of the northern nations of Europe appeared to be restored to its former extent and vigour; that event freed it from the restraints to which it was subject, in consequence of the hostile acts of England; but the American war having renewed this state of embarrassment, the northern nations were again deprived of the whole of the valuable commerce of the United States. America accepted the mediation, and commissioners were named to proceed to Russia. England, however, did not consent to treat, either at St. Petersburg, or under the mediation of a third power; but proposed to * See chapter on Russia. |