Mr. DAWSON presented a petition of the TrusResolved, That the committee to whom was tees of the University of Orleans, signed by Wilreferred the report of the Secretary of the Navy, liam C. C. Claiborne, their chancellor, praying a made to this House on the 26th instant, be direct-grant of the lot of land lying in the city of New ed to inquire whether any, and if any what, alter- Orleans, on which the Government House is sitations are necessary to an act establishing Navy uated.-Referred to the Committee on the Public Hospitals, passed the 26th February, 1811, and Lands. that they report by bill or otherwise.

H. OF R.

Foreign Relations.

MAY, 1812.

confirming claims to lands in the Mississippi Ter-lin and Milan decrees. Indeed, the only cases ritory, founded on warrants of survey granted by the Spanish Government; which was read twice, and committed to a Committee of the Whole on Monday next.

FOREIGN RELATIONS.

Mr. RANDOLPH said that rumors to which he could not shut his ears [of an intended declaration of war on Monday next, with closed doors] and the circumstance which had just passed under the eye of the House [alluding to a motion to adjourn] impelled him to make a last effort to rescue the country from the calamities which, he feared, were impending over it. He had a proposition to submit, the decision of which would affect vitally the best interests of the nation. He conceived himself bound to bring it forward. He did not feel himself a free agent in the transaction. He would endeavor to state, as succinctly as he could, the grounds of his motion, and he humbly asked the attention of every man whose mind was at all open to conviction-of every man devoted to the cause of his country, not only in that House, but in every rank and condition of life, throughout the State."

The motion, which he was about to offer, grew out of certain propositions, which he pledged himself to prove; nay, without an abuse of the term, to demonstrate.

relied upon by Mr. Monroe to prove the repeal of the French decrees, are those of the Grace Ann Green, and the New Orleans Packet. On the first of these no great stress is laid—because, having been captured by an English cruiser, she was retaken by her own crew, and carried into Marseilles, where, consequently, the captors became French prisoners of war. As well might it be expected that, in case of war between the United States and England, our privateers carrying their prizes into French ports, should be proceeded against under these decrees. It was, therefore, on the case of the New Orleans Packet that the principal reliance was placed, to show the repeal of the obnoxious decrees. But even this case, established, beyond the possibility of doubt, that the Milan decrees of the 23d November, and 17th December, 1807, were in force subsequently to the period of their alleged repeal. This vessel, hearing, at Gibraltar, where she had disposed of a part of her cargo, of the letter of the Duke of Cadore of the 5th of August, 1810, suspended her sales, and the supercargo, after having consulted with Mr. Hackley, the American Consul at Cadiz, determined, on the faith of that insidious letter, to proceed with the remainder of his cargo to Bordeaux. He took the precaution, however, to delay his voyage, so as not to arrive in France before the 1st of November, the day on which the Berlin and Milan decrees were to cease to operate.

Here Mr. RANDOLPH was called to order by Mr. WRIGHT, who said there was no motion before the House.

The SPEAKER Overruled Mr. WRIGHT's objection, as the gentleman from Virginia had declared his intention to make a motion, and it had been usual to permit prefatory remarks.

Mr. RANDOLPH said he would proceed in his argument without deviating to the right or to the left, and he would endeavor to suppress every feeling which the question was so well calculated

The first of these propositions was, that the Berlin and Milan decrees were not only not repealed, but that our Government had furnished to the House and to the world unequivocal evidence of the fact. The difficulty in demonstrating this proposition arose rather from his embarrassment in selecting from the vast mass of evidence before him, than in any deficiency of proof; for, if he were to use all the testimony that might be adduced, he feared his discourse would grow to a bulk not inferior to the volume which he held in his hand. He would refer the House to the correspondence, generally, of Mr. Russell, our agent at Paris, accompanying the President's "The vessel accordingly arrived in the Garonne on Message of the present session. He referred to the 14th of November, but did not reach Bordeaux the schedule of American vessels taken by French until the 3d of December. On the 5th of this month privateers, since the first of November, 1810, [the the Director of the Customs seized the New Orleans period of the alleged repeal of the French decrees:] Packet and her cargo, under the Milan decrees of the of these, it was worthy of remark, that "the Ro- 23d November and 17th December, 1807, expressly set binsonova, from Norfolk to London, with tobacco, forth, for having come from an English port, and hav cotton, and staves; the Mary Ann, from Charles-ing been visited by a British vessel of war."

to excite :

ton to London, with cotton and rice; the General Thus, this vessel having voluntarily entered a Eaton, from London to Charleston, in ballast; French port, on the faith of the repeal of the de the Neptune, from London to Charleston, also in crees, was seized under them: ballast; the Clio, from London to Philadelphia, the Zebra, from

"These facts (continues Mr. Russell) having beer

Boston to Tarragona, (then in possession of the Consul at Bordeaux, and the principal one, that of the Spaniards) with staves, all coming under the seizure under the Milan decrees, being established by operation of the French decrees, and seized since the proces verbal, put into my hands by one of the con the 2d November, 1810, had not been restored on signees of the cargo, I conceived it to be my duty no the 4th of July last ;" and that the only two vesto suffer the transaction to pass unnoticed." sels named in that schedule, which had been reThis proces verbal is neither more nor les stored, viz: the Two Brothers, from Boston to St. Malo, and the Star, from Salem to Naples, (the the law officer of the French Government, agree one a port in France, the other virtually a French ably to the law of the Empire. What should w port,) did not come within the scope of the Ber- say to a libel of a vessel by the District Attorney

of the United States, or her seizure by the custom-house officers, under an act of Congress which had been repealed? The whole of this correspondence proves unequivocally that neither the custom-house officers, the courts of law, nor the French cruisers, not even the public ships of war had ever received notice from their Government of the repeal of the Berlin and Milan decrees. This last fact is further substantiated by the remonstrance of Mr. Barlow to the Duke of Bassano, of the 12th of March, 1812, in the case of the "vessels captured and burnt by His Impe. rial and Royal Majesty's ships Medusa and Nymph." It should be recollected that all the decrees of the French Emperor are given strictly in charge to certain public functionaries, who are directed to put them in force. The only authorities to whom the repeal of these decrees was to be a rule of action, the cruisers, courts, and officers of the customs, remained profoundly ignorant of the fact. It is to be found nowhere but in the Proclamation of the President of the United States, of the 2d November, 1810:

"To have waited for the receipt of this proclamation (says Mr. Russell) in order to make use of it for the liberation of the New Orleans Packet, appeared to me a preposterous and unworthy course of proceeding; and to be nothing better than absurdly and basely employing the declaration of the President, that the Berlin and Milan decrees had been revoked, as the means of obtaining their revocation."

They were, then, not revoked, or surely our Minister would not stand in need of any means for obtaining their revocation. Proofs multiply on proofs.

"The custom-house officers of Bordeaux commenced unlading the New Orleans Packet on the 10th December, and completed that work on the 20th, as appears by their proces verbal of those dates. That of the 20th expressly declares that the property was to be pursued before the Imperial Council of Prizes [the Court of Admiralty] at Paris, according to the decrees of the 23d November, and 17th December, 1806, or, in other words, under the decrees of Milan.”

The

H. OF R.

must believe the law to be repealed! What sort of a release is this? Mr. Russell makes a merit of having "rescued this property from the seizure with which it has been visited-that is, rescued it from a court of justice; and of "having placed it in a situation more favorable than that of many other vessels and cargoes, which continu'ed in a kind of mortemain, by the suspension of all proceedings in regard to them." And this letter and case is adduced as proof of the repeal of the Berlin and Milan decrees, on the 1st of November, 1810!

It is true that, in a postscript dated the 5th of July, a month subsequent to the date of the letter to which it is appended. and seven months after his remonstrance to the French Government, Mr. Russell states that orders had been given to cancel the bond in question. But, surely, this is no proof of the revocation of the decrees. Let us see what he says on the 15th of that month:

"Although I was fully impressed with the importance of an early decision in favor of the captured vessels, none of which had been included in the list above mentioned"-" of the sixteen American vessels, whose cargoes had been admitted by order of the Emperor"probaby under license "yet I deemed it proper to wait for a few days, before I made an application on the subject. On the 11th, however, having learnt, at the Council of Prizes, that no new order had been received there, [that, on the 11th of July, 1811, the French Admiralty Court had no notice of the repeal of the decree,] I judged it to be my duty no longer to remain silent. I therefore, on that day, addressed to the Duke of Bassano my note, with a list of American vessels captured since the first of November. On the 15th, I learnt that he had laid this note, with a general report, before the Emperor; but that his Majesty declined taking any decision with regard to it, before it had been submitted to a Council of Commerce."

The House would take into consideration the distinction between the Council of Prizes, an Admiralty Court, bound to decide according to the laws of the Empire, and the Council of Commerce, which was of the nature of a board of trade, charged with the general superintendence Mr. Russell's remonstrance was submitted to of the concerns of commerce; occupied in devisthe Council of Commerce, and further proceed- ing regulations, not expounding them; an instiings against the New Orleans Packet suspended. tution altogether political, by no means judicial. papers were not transmitted to the Council His Majesty then determined to consult his Counof Prizes, nor a prosecution instituted before that cil of Commerce, whether from motives of policy tribunal;" which proves only that the prosecution he should or should not grant a special exempat law was suspended, not that the laws were re-tion from the operation of his laws. In the same pealed" and the vessel and cargo, on the 9th of January, were placed at the disposition of the consignees, on giving bond to pay the estimated amount, should it definitively be decided that a confiscation should take place." Recollect that this vessel voluntarily entered a French port on the faith of the repeal of those decrees. She is seized, and libelled under them, but, after great exertion on the part of the American Minister, he obtains from the French Government-what? Proof of the bona fide revocation of the decrees? Nothing like it. A discharge of the vessel? Not at all-the bond represents her-she stands pledged in her full value in case she should be found to come within the scope of the law; and yet we

letter, learning from the Duke of Bassano, that "the case of the brig Good Intent, must be carried before the Council of Prizes," Mr. Russell wishes to secure this case from this "inauspicious mode of proceeding;" that is, from the operation of the law. Why, if the law, so dreaded, was repealed?

I had, from time to time, (he continues,) informed myself of the proceedings, in regard to the captured vessels, and ascertained the fact, that the Duke of Bassano had made a report in relation to them. The Emperor, it appears, however, still wished for the decision of his 'Council of Commerce." What! to know if his decrees of Berlin and Milan were revoked? Was His

Majesty ignorant of the fact? Can stronger evidence be adduced, that they were in force; or can the release, (not by the courts of law, but by special Executive interference,) under peculiar circumstances, and after a long detention for violating those decrees, of a single vessel, establish the fact of their repeal? On the contrary, ought not the solitary exception (granting it to be one) fortify the general rule?

In passing, it was well worthy of remark, that the French Minister, being interrogated by Mr. Russell on the subject of our future commercial intercourse with France, replied, "no such communication would be made at Paris, but that Mr. Serrurier would be fully instructed on this head." | The House would recollect how much had been expected from Mr. Serrurier on his arrival, and how much had been obtained. An ex-Secretary of State, even, had the temerity to charge the President with having compelled him to desist from putting any interrogatories to the French Minister on his arrival. But, be that as it may, one thing is certain, that application having been made to the Minister, at the requisition of the Senate during the present session, he had declared an entire ignorance of everything relating to the subject.

To dissipate the last shadow of doubt on the question of the repeal of the French decrees, Mr. Serrurier, in his letter of July 23, 1811, to the Secretary of State, expressly declares that

MAY, 1812.

belligerents, so as that they should cease to violate our neutral rights, was alone required. In the second, other matter was blended with them, although the words of the two acts were identically the same. This grew out of the insidious letter of the Duke of Cadore, the terms of which were accepted, with the conditions annexed, by the President of the United States. These conditions presented two alternatives: "That England should revoke her Orders in Council, and abolish those principles of blockade which France alleged to be new, or that the United States should cause their flag to be respected by the English ;" in other words, should become parties to the war on the side of France. In order to know what these principles were, the renunciation of which we were to require at the instigation of France, it would be necessary to attend to the language of the French decrees. By these, it would not be denied that principles, heretofore unheard of, were attempted to be "interpolated into the laws of nations"-principles diametrically adverse to those which the Government of the United States had repeatedly recognised, in their correspondence with foreign Powers as well as in their public treaties, to be legitimate and incontestable. The French doctrine of blockade being the only branch of the subject embraced in the Duke of Cadore's letter of the 5th of August, 1810, would alone be noticed. These required, that the right of blockade should be restricted" to fortified ports, invested by sea and by land. That it should not extend to the mouths of rivers, harbors, or places, not fortified."

"The new dispositions of our Government, expressed in the supplementary act of the 2d of March last, having been officially communicated to his Court, his Imperial Majesty, as soon as he was made acquainted with them, directed that the American vessels sequestered in the ports of France since the 2d of November, should be released; orders were, at the same time, to be given to admit American vessels, laden with Amer-ably to the long established principles of national ican produce."

Under these circumstances, whatever difference of opinion might exist, as to the propriety of the President's proclamation in the first instance,

there could be none as to its revocation. As soon
as it was ascertained, not only from the proceed-
ings of her cruisers on the high seas, but of the
courts of law, and of her Government, that France
had acted, mala fide, to this country, it surely
became the duty of the President to recall that
proclamation. He could have no doubt of his
Constitutional power over the subject, having
already exercised it in a case not dissimilar
(Erskine's arrangement.) That Proclamation
was the dividing line of our policy; the root of
our present evil. From that fatal proclamation
we are to date our departure from that neutral
position to which we had so long and so tena-
ciously adhered, and the accomplishment of the
designs of France upon us. In issuing it, the
President had yielded to the deceitful overtures of
France; and it was worthy of observation, how
different a construction had thereby been put upon
the act of non-intercourse, as it was commonly
called, from that of May, 1810, although the words
of the two acts were the same. In the first case,
a modification of the decrees and orders of the

Under such definition, the blockade of May 1806, otherwise called Mr. Fox's blockade, stood condemned; but Mr. R. had no hesitation in affirming that blockade to have been legal, agree

law, sanctioned by the United States. In Mr. Foster's letter of the 3d of July last, to Mr. Monroe, he says: "the blockade of May, 1806, was notified by Mr. Secretary Fox on this principle: 'that no blockade can be justifiable or valid, unless it be supported by an adequate force destined to maintain it, and to expose to hazard all vessels attempting to evade its operation" nor was that blockade announced; until he had satisfied himself, by a communication with the Board of Admiralty, that the Admiralty possessed the means, and would employ them, of watching the whole coast, from Brest to Elbe, and of effectually enforcing the blockade.

"The blockade of May, 1806, according to the doctrine maintained by Great Britain, was just and lawful in its origin, because it was supported both in intention and fact by an adequate naval force." In a subsequent part of the same letter it is distinctly averred that "that blockade was maintained by a sufficient naval force;" and the doctrine of paper blockade is every where expressly disclaimed in the correspondence, here as well as at London. "If (says Mr. Foster) the Orders in Council shall be abrogated, the blockade of May, 1806, could not continue under our construction of the law of nations, unless that

MAY, 1812.

Foreign Relations.

1458

alleges to be new."
principles of blockade which the French Government

the British Government will repeal nothing but the Orders in Council"-and again, "It is certainly true that the American Government has required, as indispensable in the view of its acts of intercourse and non intercourse, the annulment of the British blockade of May, 1806."

blockade should be maintained by a due applica-clare the perfect readiness of this Government to fulfil tion of an adequate naval force." The same ad- the conditions. On these terms the British Government has always been seriously disposed to repeal the mission will be found in Marquis Wellesley's corOrders in Council. It appears however, not only by respondence with Mr. Pinkney. The coast of France from Brest to Calais is the letter of the French Minister, but by your explanaIt had tion, that the repeal of the Orders in Council will not what seamen call an iron-bound coast. ments. The British Government is further required, been blockaded in every war during the last cen- satisfy either the French or the American Governtury, that short period of the American war ex-by the letter of the French Minister, to renounce those cepted, when England lost the mastery of the channel. No British Minister would be suffered to hold his place who should fail strictly to watch This fact is placed beyond a doubt, by Mr. the opposite coast of France. Brest, her principal naval arsenal, protruded out into the Atlantic Pinkney's answer of the 14th of January, 1811. "If I comprehend the other parts of your Lordocean, confessed the want of suitable harbors for ships of war in the channel; while from Ply-ship's letter," says he, "they declare in effect that mouth, Portsmouth, and the mouth of the Thames, the opposite coast is easily watched and overawed. From Calais to the Elbe the coast is low. flat, and shelving, difficult of access, affording few good inlets, indeed none except the Scheldt. The blockade of this coast is as easy as that of CarThus, when the British Government stood olina. But it must not pass unnoticed that the blockade was, in point of fact, (as appears from pledged to repeal its Orders in Council, a question Mr. Monroe's letters to Mr. Madison of the 17th entirely distinct has been dexterously mingled and 20th of May, 1806,) limited to the small ex- with it in our discussions with England; the retent of the coast between Havre and Ostend; nunciation of the right of blockade, in the face of neutrals being permitted to trade freely eastward Mr. Madison's construction of the non-intercourse of Ostend, and westward of the mouth of the law, and of Mr. Smith's instructions to General Seine, "except in articles contraband of war and Armstrong of July 5, and 2d November, 1810, enemies' property, which are seizable without has been declared indispensable to the view of blockade." And Mr. Monroe, in announcing this that act, and there is the fullest admission that very blockade of May 16, 1806, to his own Gov-more than the repeal of the Orders in Council ernment, speaks of it as a measure highly satis- was required, viz: of that blockade, against which factory to the commercial interests. And yet the we had not lifted our voice, until required to do removal of this blockade, against which Mr. Mon- so by France, which Mr. Monroe, (so far from remonstrating against it, which it would have been roe did not remonstrate, of which there was no mention in the subsequent arrangement of Mr. his duty to have done if illegal,) considers "as Erskine, which did not stand in the way of that highly satisfactory to the commercial interests." A blockade as legal as would be that of the ports of arrangement, of which no notice was taken in our proposition to England for a mutual abandon- the Chesapeake, with a sufficient force stationed in blockade with such a force as renders the approach ment of our embargo and her Orders in Council, Lynnhaven Bay. What is a legal blockade ? A is now, by French device and contrivance, to of merchant vessels dangerous. Mark the wonderbe made a sine qua non, an indispensable prelim-ful facility with which Mr. Pinkney not only blends inary to all accommodation with Great Britain. Mr. R. had heard with sincere satisfaction the question of the blockade of May, 1806, with many respectable gentlemen in the House and out the repeal of the Orders in Council; but shows of it express a wish, that, by a revocation of the his disposition to go, if he could, the whole length Orders in Council, the British Ministry would of the French doctrine of blockade; a doctrine unheard of before the reign of Bonaparte. "It put it in the power of our Government to come is by no means clear that it may not fairly be to some adjustment of our differences with Eng-contended on principle and early usage that a land. The position which he was about to lay down, and the proof of which the course of his maritime blockade is incomplete with regard to argument had compelled him in some degree to States at peace, unless the place which it affects anticipate, however it might startle persons of is invested by land as well as by sea." And yet, this description, was nevertheless susceptible of in the same letter, he says, "You imagine that the most direct and positive evidence. Little did the repeal is not to remain in force, unless the those gentlemen dream, but such was the indis- British Government, in addition to the revocation putable fact, that the Orders in Council had not of its Orders in Council, abandon its system of stood in the way of accommodation, and that blockade. I am not conscious of having stated, their removal at this moment would not satisfy as your Lordship seems to think, that it is so, and our Administration. In Lord Wellesley's letter I believe, in fact, that it is otherwise. Even if it were admitted, however, the Orders in Council to Mr. Pinkney of December 23, 1810. he says: "If nothing more had been required of Great Brit- ought nevertheless to be revoked." The Ameriin Mr. Smith's letter to Commodore Preble of the ain, for the purpose of securing the continuation of the can doctrine of blockade is expressly laid down "Whenever therefore repeal of the French decrees, than the repeal of our Orders in Council, I should not have hesitated to de-4th of February, 1804.