pated the ratification of the convention, by the British government; because it was fair, and reciprocal, in its provisions, advantageous to both parties, and had been concluded by a minister plenipotentiary in behalf of Great Britain. On that occasion, the motives and conduct of the president were generously construed, and liberally eulogised, by all parties in the United States. Therefore, Great Britain had no reason to complain of the faith which the United States had reposed in the declaration of the proper functionary of the French government; nor to impute, to the president of the United States, and afterwards to congress, an unbecoming promptitude, in announcing the repeal of the decrees by proclamation, and proceeding, by law, to revive and enforce the several provisions of the inhibitory act against the commerce of Great Britain. The president and the congress acted, in the affair, with the candour and confidence that became the rulers of a just and magnanimous nation. That they were not able to produce the repeal in form, of the Berlin and Milan decrees, was alone chargeable to the finesse of the French government. No doubt this evidence, with all the solemnities required by the British government, was purposely withheld, to prevent the abrogation of the orders in council, on the part of Great Britain, and the probable result, to her, of an unrestrained commerce with the United States. Such a result was deprecated by Bonaparte, and avoided with the wariness of a sagacious statesman.

The United States had regularly fulfilled all their engagements with the French nation, as implied in the alternative act, so frequently quoted; and were desirous to convince Great Britain of their readiness to observe the same measure of amity towards her. For this purpose, their minister at Paris endeavoured to procure from the emperor, a specific recognition of the repeal of the decrees, to be exhibited to the British government, in justification of the president's proclamation, and of the act of congress, of the 2d of March, 1811.

The minister of France no longer able to resist his applications, or to answer them by any reasonable apology, on the 10th of May, 1812, transmitted to him the following act:

Palace of St. Cloud, April 28, 1811. "Napoleon, emperor of the French, king of Italy, protector of the confederation of the Rhine, mediator of the Swiss confederacy: On the report of our minister for foreign affairs, being informed of the law of the 2d of March, 1811, by which the congress of the United States has decreed the exeecution of the provisions of the act of non-intercourse, which interdicts the entry into American ports, of the ships and merchandise of Great Britain, her colonies, and dependencies; and considering that the said law is an act of resistance to the arbitrary pretensions, advanced in the British orders in council, and a formal refusal to sanction a system hostile to the independence of neutral powers, and of their flags; we have decreed, and do decree, as follows: The decrees of Berlin and Milan are definitively, from the first of November last, considered as no longer in force, as far as regards American vessels.

"Signed," &c.

The American minister, at the court of France, lost no time in communicating this decree both to the government at Washington, and to the minister of the United States at the British court. Its date, and the time of its first publication, threw a mystery over the whole correspondence of the English, French, and American governments. The public voice, in various quarters, called for explanation. The American secretary of state, and the French minister at Washington, both declared, that they had never received a copy of this imperial act nor been in any way apprised of its existence. It purported to have been ordained more than a year, previously to its communication to Mr. Barlow; and it seemed to have existed, at the very time, when the British government denied the repeal of the Berlin and Milan decrees, and the American minister in France was importuning the French, for such a formal evidence of their repeal. An explanation being urged on the duke of Bassano, he expressed his surprise, that a communication from him, in May, 1811, for the information of the American government, had

not been received. He also intimated, that he had at the same time furnished Mr. Russell, the American chargé d'affaires, at Paris, with a copy of the decree of the 28th of April, 1811. This intimation, however, Mr. Russell explicitly contradicted.

The Imperial act, of the 28th of April, 1811, recognizing the repeal of the Berlin and Milan decrees, notwithstanding all the mystery in the case, together with the sufferings and complaints of the British merchants and manufacturers, in various parts of the kingdom, so far influenced the British government, that, on the 23d of June, 1812, the orders in council of January, 1807, and April, 1809, were conditionally withdrawn. See appendix, No. VII.

Had the imperial recognition, of the 28th of April, 1811, been received, and communicated to Great Britain, and had she in consequence modified her orders in council, one month earlier, the issue, which followed, would probably have been avoided; at least for a time: but her perseverance in the practice of impressment; aggressions, of every form and degree, on the neutral commerce of the United States; and disregard of their rightful claims, in other respects, had induced the president, on the 1st of June, 1812, to recommend, to the consideration of the legislature of the union, the last appeal of nations; as necessary to vindicate the claims of justice, which had been so long, and so frequently violated, without the hope of redress, by any other resort. When the intelligence of the modification of the orders in council, on the 23d of June, 1812, arrived in the United States, war had actually commenced. They were then unwilling to recede from the belligerant ground, and retract the solemn decision, to which they had been impelled, while the wars of their oppressors insured the repetition of the wrongs to which they had been subjected. Indeed it had become necessary, that Great Britain should be fully convinced, that they preferred the evils of war to that condition, into which they had been thrown, by her extravagant pretensions and lawless conduct. The orders in council, if they had been unequivocally and unconditionally rescinded, formed only one of the grievances, of

which, the United States complained. The impressment of their seamen, in the most unlawful manner, and often accompanied by the most aggravating circumstances, and the predatory system executed by the British cruizers, and sanctioned by the adjudications of British admiralty courts, had awakened the resentment of a great majority of the people, in a still higher degree than even those orders. Besides these, many subordinate causes of complaint, coldly, haughtily, and contemptuously disregarded by their enemy, lay deeply rankling in the American bosom. It was naturally trusted, by a brave and injured people, that the war, into which they were driven, would ultimately produce such impressions of the justice of their cause, of the firmness of their councils, and of the vigour of their arms, as would exact from Great Britain a more fair and regular deportment, in a future peace. They were determined to encounter the hazards and privations of war, rather than again permit their very independence to become the sport of any nation. Their expectations, though exposed to temporary disappointment, proved in the end not to be too sanguine. Well-founded national feeling incited and impelled them; and they were firmly resolved to pursue, to an honourable end, the course they had taken; under the most thorough convictions of its justice and expediency. Indeed such had been the injuries, vexations, and mortifications, to which they had long been subjected, on the ocean, on their frontiers, and in their negociations, and so hopeless were they, of any beneficial results from diplomatic discussions of the pretensions of the British government, resumed without a change of former feelings and former interests, that they considered a determined maintenance of the war, as the best and shortest course to a firm and honourable peace.

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

Embargo of 1807; Non Importation 1809; Political Clamors in the Eastern states; Henry's Secret Mission to Boston; His Communication to the American Government; Indian Hostilities; Harrison marches against the Prophet; Battle of Tippecanoe.

WHILE the United States and Great Britain were engaged in amicable negociations, for the accommodation of their differences, through public ministers regularly authorised for the purpose, an extraordinary and reprehensible intrigue was commenced by the way of Canada, under the immediate direction of sir James Craig, the governor general of the British provinces, of North America, with the design and expectation to foment contentions among the people of the United States, and a dissolution of their federal union.

On the 22d of December, 1807, congress passed an act, laying an embargo, on all the ships and vessels in the ports and harbours of the United States, in pursuance of the recommendation of president Jefferson. This act was well conceived and intended, to guard the property of the citizens of the United States, and the persons of their seamen against the operations of the British orders in council, of January and November, 1807, and against an extension of the Berlin decree to them, by some new French measures of the month of September in the same year. This embargo was continued until the first of March, 1809; at which time it was repealed, and in its stead was substituted, an act, to interdict the commercial intercourse between the United States and Great Britain and France, and their dependencies.

The trying operation of these acts, together with the uses made of them, by those who, instead of misrepresenting their ends, ought to have admitted their saving policy, greatly influenced the spirit of party; especially in the eastern states. In the censures upon the administration and its measures,