it is the business of the commissariat to provide, both for man and horse.

Accordingly, the six months before the arrival of the French armics in Spain, a requisition of bakers was made at Bayonne to bake biscuits, because they may be kept for a length of time; and the fortress of Pampeluna is his general depot for them and other stores. Even for the horse the barley-meal, husk and all, are ground down and baked in the form of a coarse cake, to prevent ferimentation; and this, by being stooped, not only corrects the water which the horse drinks, but by habit the animal eats it in the field. The biscuits for the men, in the same manner, boiled up with portable soup, give nourishment to the soldier, at the same time that the food is light, easy of digestion, and does not subject him to dysentery. It would be truly desirable to have the French mode of supplying their armies clearly explained.

As to the construction of their armies, it is altogether on the model of the Roman legions. We often see the words corps and divisions mentioned in the French bulletins, and often in the English translation, we confound these terms. It is essential to mark the difference. A corps is a complete army, under the command of a Marshal. It consists of two divisions of infantry, and one division of cavalry, besides its proportion of artillery, engineers, miners, guides, and commissariat, and is composed as follows:

Two divisions of infantry, each com manded by a general of division, equal in rank to our lieutenant general. Each division consists of two brigades, each under the command of a general of brigade, equal in rank to our major general. Each brigade of two regiments. Each regiment of three batta hions. Each battalion of nine companies. Each company of 117 men. But in time of war the grenadiers are detached and formed into separate battalions; so that each battalion has eight companies, and taking off the odd 17 men per company, each battalion on an average has 800 men; so that each regiment of infantry is 2400 strong. A division of cavalry consists of two brigades. Each brigade of two regiments. Each regiment of 1000 men, but on an average there are not more

than 800. So that in each division of infantry there are 9600.-In each divi sion of cavalry 3200.-And to form a corps there are,

Two divisions of infantry 19,200
One ditto of cavalry 3,200
Artillery, pioneers, guides,
&c. say

In all about

600

23,000 men But they necessarily vary according to circumstances from 20 to 25,000 men.-A corps therefore under the chief command of a marshal, is an army with three generals of division, and six generals of brigade under him. It is certain, however, that Bonaparte does not always adhere to this rule. The Dukes Marshal do not always accompany their own corps. Thus Soult was hurried into Spain, because his great talents were thought indispensible, although his corps is one of the two which the last bulletins say have just passed the Bidassoa.

House of Representatives, Nov. 17. Mr. Macon moved the following resolution:

Resolved, That the committee ap pointed on that part of the president's message which relates to our foreign relations, be instructed to inquire into the expediency of excluding by law from the ports, har bours, and waters of the United States, all armed ships and vessels belonging to any of the belligerent powers, having in force orders or decrees violating the lawful commerce of the United States as a nation,

Resolved, That the same committee be instructed to inquire into the expediency of prohibiting by law the admission into the ports, harbours, and waters of the United States, any ship or vessel belonging 30, or coming from any place in the possession of the above-mentioned powers, and also the importation of any goods, wares and merchandize, the growth, produce, and manufac ture of the dominions of any of the said powers.

Resolved, That the same committee be instructed to inquire into the expediency of amending the act laying an embargo, and the several acts supplemental and additional therein.

The first and second resolutions

offered by Mr. Macon were agreed to without a division-The 3d was ordered to lie on the table-Ayes 78. Nov. 21.-The committee to whom was referred so much of the president's message as relates to foreign powers, made their report as follows:

25 years of peace, hardly interrupted by transient hostilities, and of prosperi ty unparalleled in the history of uafirst time since the treaty which termi tions; the United States are, for the nated the revolutionary war, placed in a situation equally difficult, critical and dangerous. Those principles recognized by the civilized world under the name of law of nations, which heretofore controuled belligerent powers, regulated the duties of neutrals, and protected their rights, are now avowedly disregarded or forgotten by Great Bri tain and France. Each of those two nations captures and condemns all American vessels trading with her enemies or her enemy's allies, and every European power having become a party in the contest, the whole of our commerce with Europe and European Colonies, becomes liable to capture by either one or the other. If there be any nominal exception, it is made on a condition of tribute, which only adds insult to the injury.

The only plea urged in justification of those hostilities, is that of retaliation, grounded on a presumed acquiescence of the United States in previous aggres'sions by the other party. Waving a discussion of the correctness of the principle of retaliation, a principle doubtful in itself, and altogether inadmissible to the extent to which it has been carried, and when operating on the neutral rather than on the enemy; it is altogether untrue that the United States have ever voluntarily acquiesced in the unlawful aggressions of either nation; omitted or delayed any measure calculated to obtain redress, or in any respect deviated from that impartiality to which they were bound by to the violation of the national flag, their neutrality. France has alluded and of the Sovereignty of the United States in the instance of Pierce's mur der; of the outrage upon the Chesapeake, and of the destruction of the Impetuous. The measures taken to obtain redress in those cases are of public notoriety; and it may be added, that with the exception of the last,

ose aggressions on the soveriegnty of the United States did not affect their

neutrality, and gave no right to France either of complaint or interference. Setting aside irregularities of less importance and equally chargeable to both nations, such as the British order of June, 1803, and the decree of the French General Ferrand; the principal violations by England of the neutral rights of America, prior to the Berlin decree of Nov. 1806, and which, if acquiesced in, might have given ground of complaint to France, are the capture of American vessels laden with colonial produce, founded on a renewal of that pretended principle generally called the rule of 1756;" the impressment of American seamen, compelled thereby to become the auxiliaries of England against France, and proclamation or nominal blockades, particularly that of the coast from the river Elbe to Brest, notified in May 1806.

It will not be asserted, that the United States ever tamely acquiesced in either of those pretensions. It will not be denied, that with respect to the two first the most strenuous efforts were incessantly made to procure an alteration of the British system.

It is true, that to the nominal proclamation blockades of England, the United States had opposed only spirited and repeated remonstrances, and that these had not always been successful, But the measures which a neutral nation may be supposed bound to take against the infractions of its neutrality, must always bear a certain proportion to the extent and nature of the injury received, and to the means of opposition. It cannot certainly be pretended that a hasty resort to war should in every such instance have become the duty of America. Nor can the irregularities of England, in declaring in a state of blockade a certain extent of coast, part of which was not, and the whole of which could not, even by her powerful navy, be actually invested and blockaded, be pleaded in justification of that decree, in which France, without an efficient ficet, pretends to announce the blockade of the dominions of a power, which has the incontestible command of the sea, and before no port of which she can station a single vessel.

The Milan decree of 1807 can still less rest for its defence on the supposed acquiescence of the United States in the British orders of the preceding month,

since those orders, which have not certainly been acquisced in, were not even known in America at the date of the decree. And it is proper here to add, that the French have, particularly by the sequestration of vessels in their ports, and by burning our vessels on the high seas, gone even beyond the tenor of their own extraordinary edicts.

The allegation of an acquiescence in the Berlin decree of November 1806, by which alone the British government pretends to justify the orders in council, is equally unfounded. In the note on that subject, addressed on the 31st of December 1806, by the British government to the American ministers, after having stated that "they could not believe that the enemy would ever seriously attempt to enforce such a system,” the following declaration is expressly made. "If, however, the enemy should carry these threats into execution, and if neutral nations, contrary to all expectation, should acquiesce in such usurpations, his Majesty might be compelled, however, reluctantly, to retaliate in his just defence," &c. The two requisites necessary in the opinion of Great Britain, to justify retaliations, are stated to be, the execution of the decree, and the acquiescence of neutral nations. Yet, within eight days after, and in the face of that declaration, with out waiting for ascertaining either of these facts, the retaliating British order of January 7th, 1807, was issued, which, contrary to the acknowledged law of nations, subjected to capture vessels of the United States sailing from the parts, of one belligerent to a port of another belligerent.

The United States in the mean while, and without delay, had taken the necessary steps to ascertain the manner in which the French government intended to execute their decree.

That decree might be construed merely as a municipal law forbidding the introduction of British merchandize and the admission of vessels coming from England. Under that aspect, and if coufined to that object, the neutral rights of America were not affected by its operation.

A belligerent may, without any infraction of neutral rights, forbid the admission into his ports of any vessel coming from the ports of his enemy. And France had undoubtedly the same right to exclude from her dominions

every species of British merchandize, which the United States have exercised in forbidding the importation of certain species. Great Britain might be injured by such regulations: but America had no more right to complain of that part of the decree, than France had to object to the American non-importation act. So far indeed as respects the United States, they were placed by the municipal part of the decree in the same situation, in relation to France, in which they are placed in their intercourse with Great Britain by the permanent laws of that country. The French decree forbids American vessels to import British merchandize into France. The British navigation act for bids American vessels to import French merchandize into England. But that broad clause of the Berlin decree which declared the British islands in a state of blockade, though not followed by regulations to that effect, still threat ened an intended operation on the high seas. This, if carried into effect, would be a flagrant violation of the neutral rights of the United States, and as such they would be bound to oppose it. The minister of the United States at Paris immediately applied for explanation on that subject; and the French minister of marine, on the 24th of Dec. 1806, seven days before the date of the above mentioned note of the British govern ment, stated in answer, that the decree made no alteration in the regulations then observed in France with regard to neutral navigation, or to the commercial convention of the United States with France. That the declaration of the British islands being in a state of blockade, did not change the existing French laws concerning maritime captures, and that American vessels could not be taken at sea for the mere reason of then being going to or returning from an English port.

The execution of the decree comported for several months with those explanations; several vessels were arrested for having introduced articles of English growth, or manufacture, and among them some which being actually from England, and laden with English colonial produce, bad entered with forged papers as if coming from the United States. But no alteration of the first construction given by the French government took place until the month of September,

1807. The first condemnation on the principle that the decree subiccted neutral vessels to capture on the high seas, was that of the Horizon, on the 10th of October following.-Prior to that time there could have been no acquiescence in a decree infringing the neutral rights of the United States, because till that time it was explained ; and what was more important, execu ted in such a manner as not to infringe those rights, because until then no such infraction had taken place. The ministers of the United States at London, at the request of the British minister, communicated to him on the 18th of October, 1807, the substance of the explanations received, and of the manner in which the dccrce was executed. For they were at that time ignorant of the change which bad taken place.

It was on the 18th of September, 1807, that a new construction of the decree took place; an instruction having on that day been transmitted to the council of prizes by the minister of justice, by which that court was informed that French armed vessels were authorised, under that decree, to seize, without exception, in neutral vessels, either English property or merchandize of English growth or manufacture.

An immediate explanation having been asked from the French minister of foreign relations, he confirmed, in his answer of the 7th of October, 1807, the determination of his government to adopt that construction. Its first application took place on the 10th of the same month, in the case of the Horizon of which the minister of the United States was not informed until the mouth of November; and on the 12th of that month, be presented a spirited remonstrance against that infraction of the neutral rights of the United States. He had, in the meanwhile, transmitted to America the instruction to the council of prizes of the 18th of September. This was received in Dec. 1807, and a copy of the decision in the case of the Horizon, having at the same time reached governinent, the president, aware of the consequences which would follow that new state of things, communicated immediately to congress the alteration of the French decree, and recommended the embargo, which was accordingly laid on the 22d of Dec. 1807, at which time it was well under stood, iu this country, that the British