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Mr. Monroe to Mr. Foster. Department of State, Oct. 31,

1811.

SIR, I have just had the honour to receive your letter of the 30th of this month.

I am glad to find, that the communication which I had the honour to make to you on the 11th instant relative to the court of inquiry, which was the subject of it, is viewed by you in the favourable light which you have stated.

Although I regret that the proposition which you now make in consequence of that communication, has been delayed to the present moment, I am ready to receive the terms of it whenever you may think proper to communicate them. Permit me to add, that the pleasure of finding them satisfactory will be duly augmented, if they should be introductory to a removal of all the differences depending between our two countries, the hope of which is so little encouraged by your past correspondence. A prospect of such a result will be embraced, on my part, with a spirit of conciliation, equal to that which has been expressed by you.

I have the honour to be, &c.

Augustus J. Foster, Esq. &c. &c.

JAMES MONROE.

Mr. Foster to Mr. Monroe. Washington, Nov. 1, 1811. SIR,-In pursuance of the orders which I have received from his royal highness the prince regent, in the name and on the behalf of his majesty, for the purpose of proceeding to a final adjustment of the differences which have arisen between Great Britain and the United States, in the affair of the Chesapeake frigate, I have the honour to acquaint you-First, that I am instructed to repeat to the American government the prompt disavowal made by his majesty (and recited in Mr. Erskine's note of April 17, 1809, to Mr. Smith,) on being apprized of the unauthorized act of the officer in command of his naval forces on the coast of America, whose recall from a highly important and honourable command immediately ensued as a mark of his majesty's disapprobation.

Secondly, that I am authorized to offer, in addition to that disavowal, on the part of his royal highness, the immediate restoration, as far as circumstances will admit, of the men who, in consequence of admiral Berkeley's orders, were forcibly taken out of the Chesapeake, to the vessel from which they were taken: or, if that ship should be no longer in commission, to such seaport of the United States as the American government may name for the purpose.

Thirdly, that I am also authorized to offer to the American government a suitable pecuniary provision for the sufferers in consequence of the attack on the Chesapeake, including the families of those seamen who unfortunately fell in the action, and of the wounded survivors.

These honourable propositions, I can assure you, sir, are made with the sincere desire that they may prove satisfactory to the government of the United States, and I trust they will meet with that amicable reception which their conciliatory nature entitles them to. I need scarcely add how cordially I join with you in the wish, that they might prove introductory to a removal of all the differences depending between our two countries.

I have the honour to be, &c.

AUG. J. FOSTER.

To the Hon. James Monroe, &c. &c.

Mr. Monroe to Mr. Foster.

Nov. 12, 1811.

SIR, I have had the honour to receive your letter of the 1st November, and to lay it before the President.

It is much to be regretted that the reparation due for such an aggression as that committed on the United States frigate the Chesapeake, should have been so long delayed; nor could the translation of the offending officer from one command to another be regarded as constituting a part of a reparation otherwise satisfactory; considering however the existing circumstances of the case, and the early and amicable attention paid to it by his royal highness the prince regent, the President accedes to the proposition contained in your letter, and in so doing your government will, I am persuaded, see a proof of the conciliatory disposition by which the President has been actuated.

The officer commanding the Chesapeake now lying n the harbour of Boston, will be instructed to receive the men who are to be restored to that ship.

I have the honour, &c. &c.

Augustus J, Foster, &c. &c. &c,

JAMES MONROE.

REPORT

OF THE COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS. NOVEMBER 29, 1811.

THE Committee to whom was referred that part of the President's message, which relates to our foreign affairs, beg leave to report in part

That they have endeavoured to give to the subject submitted to them, that full and dispassionate consideration which is due to one so intimately connected with the interest, the peace, the safety and honour of their country.

Your committee will not encumber your journals and waste your patience with a detailed history of all the vari ous matters growing out of our foreign relations. The cold recital of wrongs, of injuries and aggressions known and felt by every member of this Union, could have no other effect than to deaden the national sensibility, and render the publick mind callous to injuries with which it is already too familiar.

Without recurring then to the multiplied wrongs of partial or temporary operation, of which we have so just cause of complaint against the two great belligerents, your committee will only call your attention, at this time, to the systematick aggression of those powers, authorized by their edicts against neutral commerce-a system, which as regarded its principles, was founded on pretensions that went to the subversion of our national independence: and which, although now abandoned by one power, is, in its broad and destructive operation as still enforced by the other, apping the foundation of our prosperity,

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It is more than five years since England and France, in violation of those principles of justice and publick law, held sacred by all civilized nations, commenced this unprecedented system, by seizing the property of the citizens of the United States, peaceably pursuing their lawful commerce on the high seas. To shield themselves from the odium which such outrages must incur, each of the belligerents sought a pretext in the conduct of the other—each attempting to justify his system of rapine as a retaliation for similar acts on the part of his enemy. As if the law of nations, founded on the eternal rules of justice, could sanction a principle, which, if engrafted into our municipal code, would excuse the crime of one robber, upon the sole plea that the unfortunate object of his cupidity, was also a victim to the injustice of another. The fact of priority could be true as to one only of the parties; and whether true or false, could furnish no ground of justification.

The United States thus unexpectedly and violently assailed by the two greatest powers in Europe, withdrew their citizens and property from the ocean: and cherishing the blessing of peace, although the occasion would have fully justified war, sought redress in an appeal to the justice and magnanimity of the belligerents. When this appeal had failed of the success which was due to its moderation, other measures, founded on the same pacifick policy, but applying to the interests, instead of the justice of the belligerents, were resorted to. Such was the character of the non-intercourse and non-importation laws, which invited the return of both powers to their former, state of amicable relation, by offering commercial advantages to the one who should first revoke his hostile edicts, and imposing restrictions on the other.

France, at length, availing herself of the proffers made equally to her and her enemy, by the non-importation law of May, 1810, announced the repeal on the first of the following November, of the decrees of Berlin and Milan. And it affords a subject of sincere congratulation to be informed, through the official organs of the government, that those decrees are, so far at least as our rights are concerned, really and practically at an end.

It was confidently expected that this act on the part of France, would have been immediately followed by a revocation on the part of Great Britain of her orders in council. If our reliance on her justice had been impaired by the wrongs she had inflicted; yet when she had plighted her faith to the world that the sole motive of her aggression on neutral commerce was to be found in the Berlin and Milan decrees, we looked forward to the extinction of those decrees, as the period when the freedom of the seas would be again restored.

In this reasonable expectation we have, however, been disappointed. A year has elapsed since the French decrees were rescinded, and yet Great Britain, instead of retracting pari passu that course of unjustifiable attack on neutral rights in which she professed to be only the reluctant follower of France, has advanced with bolder and continually increasing strides. To the categorical demands lately made by our government for the repeal of her orders in council, she has affected to deny the practical extinction of the French decrees: and she has, moreover, advanced a new and unexpected demand, increasing in hostility the orders themselves. She has insisted, through her accredited minister at this place, that the repeal of the orders in council must be preceded, not only by the practical abandonment of the decrees of Berlin and Milan, so far as they infringe the neutral rights of the United States; but by the renunciation on the part of France, of the whole of her system of commercial warfare against Great Britain, of which those decrees originally formed a part.

This system is understood to consist in a course of measures adopted by France and the other powers on the continent subject to, or in alliance with her, calculated to prevent the introduction into their territories of the products and manufactures of Great Britain and her colonies; and to annihilate her trade with them. However hostile these regulations may be, on the part of France towards Great Britain; or however sensibly the latter may feel their effects, they are, nevertheless, to be regarded only as the expedients of one enemy against another, for which the United States, as a neutral power, can, in no respect, be responsible: they are, too, in exact conformity with those which Great Britain has herself adopted

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