MESSAGE

FROM THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES TO CON

GRESS. JUNE 4, 1812.

I TRANSMIT, for the information of Congress, copies of a correspondence of the minister plenipotentiary of Great Britain, with the Secretary of State.

JAMES MADISON.

Mr. Foster to Mr. Monroe. Washington, May 30, 1812.

SIR,-Notwithstanding the discouraging nature of the conversation which I had the honour to have with you a few days since at your office, and the circumstance of your continued silence in regard to two letters from me, furnishing additional proof of the existence of the French decrees, nevertheless, there does now appear such clear and convincing evidence in the report of the duke of Bassano, dated the 10th of March, of the present year, of those decrees having not only never been rescinded, but of their being recently extended and aggravated in the republication of them contained in that instrument, that I cannot but imagine it will seem most important to the President that it should be communicated to Congress, without delay, in the present interesting crisis of their deliberations; and therefore hasten to fulfil the instructions of my government, in laying before the government of the United States the enclosed Moniteur of the 16th of last March, in which is contained that report, as it was made to the ruler of France, and communicated to the conservative senate.

This report confirms, if any thing were wanting to confirm, in the most unequivocal manner, the repeated assertions of Great Britain, that the Berlin and Milan decrees have never been revoked, however some partial and insidious relaxations of them may have been made in a few instances, as an encouragement to America to adopt a system beneficial to France, and injurious to Great Britain, while the conditions on which alone it has been declared that those decrees will ever be revoked, are here

explained and amplified in a manner to leave us no hope of Bonaparte having any disposition to renounce the system of injustice which he has pursued, so as to make it possible for Great Britain to give up the defensive measures she has been obliged to resort to.

I need not remind you, sir, how often it has in vain been urged by Great Britain, that a copy of the instrument should be produced, by which the decrees of Bonaparte were said to be repealed, and how much it has been desired that America should explicitly state that she did not adopt the conditions on which the repeal was offered. It is now manifest that there was never more than a conditional offer of repeal made by France, which we had a right to complain that America should have asked us to recognise as absolute, and which, if accepted in its extent by America, would only have formed fresh matter of complaint, and a new ground for declining her demands.

America must feel that it is impossible for Great Britain to rescind her orders in council, whilst the French decrees are officially declared to remain in force against all nations not subscribing to the new maritime code promulgated in those decrees; and also without something more explicit on the part of America, with regard to her understanding as to the conditions annexed by France to the repeal of those decrees, For, after what has passed, unless a full and satisfactory explanation be made on both these points, Great Britain cannot relinquish her retaliatory system against France, without implying her consent to the admissibility of the conditions in question.

These observations, will, I am sure, appear sufficiently obvious to you, sir, on perusing the enclosed paper.

It will be at once acknowledged, that this paper is a republication of the Berlin and Milan decrees, in a more aggravated form, accompanied as it is with an extension of all the obnoxious doctrines which attend those decrees, inflamed by a declaration that Bonaparte has annexed to France every independent state in his neighbourhood which had eluded them; and that he was proceeding against all other maritime parts of Europe, on the pretence that his system could not be permanent and complete, so long as they retained their liberty with regard to it.

The outrageous principle here avowed connects itself obviously with the proposition too much countenanced by

America, that the continental system of Bonaparte, as far as it operates to the confiscation of neutral property on shore, on the ground of such property being British produce or manufacture, is a mere municipal regulation which neutral or belligerent nations have no right to resent, because it does not violate any principle of the law of nations. It is unnecessary to recur to the various arguments by which it has been shown that this system does not partake of the character of municipal regulation, which neutral or belligerent nations have no right to resent, because it does not violate any principle of the law of nations; but that it is a mere war measure, directed with the most hostile spirit against Great Britain; and, in order to extend this system, on the principle of municipal regulation, all the rights of independent neutral nations are to be violated, their territories to be seized without any other cause of war whatever, but that they may be incorporated with the French nation, and thence becoming subject to her rights of dominion, receive the continental system as a municipal regulation of France; and thus the mere possibility of non-compliance with the whole of the system is made the ground for the occupation or invasion, the incorporation or extinction of every state where the French arms can reach.

Great Britain cannot believe that America will not feel a just indignation at the full development of such a system; a system which indeed Bonaparte has partially opened before, and has in the instances of the Hanseatic towns, of Portugal and other countries, carried into complete execution, but which he has never completely unfolded in all its extent until the present moment; and in what an insulting and preposterous shape does he now attempt to bring forward and promulgate this code which he is to force upon all nations? He assumes the treaty of Utrecht to be in force, and to be a law binding upon all nations, because it suits his convenience at this moment, when the navy of France is driven from the ocean, to revive the doctrine of" free ships making free goods;" he has recourse to a treaty no longer in force, in which such a stipulation existed; a treaty which, by his own express refusal at Amiens to renew any of the ancient treaties, was not then revived even as binding on Great Britain and France, between whom alone, as parties to it, and only while they

were at peace with each other, could it ever have had any legal effect; yet even this treaty is too narrow a basis for his present pretensions, since he cannot find in it his rule for limiting maritime blockades to fortresses actually invested, besieged, and likely to be taken; no provision of any description having been made in that treaty either for defining or regulating blockades.

Surely, at such an instant, America will not urge Great Britain to abandon or to soften any precautionary, any retaliatory rights against such a power. The British government not only feels itself imperiously bound to defend them as they respect Great Britain with all vigour, but to call upon every nation to resist such exorbitant pretensions.

If Great Britain, at such a moment, were to relax her orders in council against France, would not all other nations have reason to complain that the common cause was abandoned?

America must feel that Bonaparte is not acting, as indeed he never has acted, with any view of establishing principles of real freedom with respect to navigation; but is merely endeavouring to cloak his determination, if possible, to ruin Great Britain, by novel demands and rejected theories of maritime law; and America must see, that Bonaparte's object is to exclude British commerce from every coast and port of the continent; and that in pursuit of this object, trampling on the rights of independent states, he insultingly proclaims his determination to effect it by direct invasion of those independent states, which he as insultingly terms a guaranty, thus making the most solemn and sacred term in the law of nations synonymous with usurpation of territory and extinction of independence. America must see that, as all the states hitherto in his power have been seized on to guaranty his system, he is now proceeding to destroy whatever remains of independence in other neutral states, to make that guaranty complete. From his want of power to pass the Atlantick with his armies (a want of power for which the United States are indebted to the naval superiority of Great Britain,) his system of a guarantying force may fail as to America, but as he cannot hope to shut American ports against Great Britain by occupancy and invasion, he hopes to ef fect his purpose by management and fraud, and to accom

plish that by insidious relaxation which he cannot accomplish by power.

Great Britain, he feels, is only to be ruined by excluding her from every port in the world; he hopes therefore to shut every port in Europe by force, and every port in America by management; he pretends to conciliate America by applause of her conduct, and a partial relaxation of his system in her favour.-He accompanies the promise of repealing his decrees with conditions, which he trusts America will not disavow, and which he knows Great Britain must reject; knowing, at the same time, that the relaxation of his decrees will be of little use to America, without a corresponding relaxation by Great Britain, he throws every obstacle against concession to America by Great Britain, making her perseverance in her retaliatory system more than ever essential to her honour and exis tence. And surely it will not escape the notice, or fail to excite the indignation of the American government, that the ruler of France, by taking the new ground now assumed, has retracted the concession which America sup posed him to have made: He has inconsistently and contemptuously withdrawn from her the ground upon which she has taken a hostile attitude against Great Britain, since the repeal of our orders in council, and even the renunciation of our rights of blockade, would no longer suffice to obtain a repeal of the Berlin and Milan decrees.

His majesty's government cannot but hope that America, considering all the extravagant pretensions set forth by the ruler of France, in the duke of Bassano's report, and at the same time the resolution to march his armies into all states, into the ports of which the English flag is admitted, will acknowledge, that this doctrine and resolution constitute a complete annihilation of neutrality, and that she is bound, as a neutral state, to disavow and resist them. Every state that acquiesces in this report, must act upon the principle, that neutral and enemy are to be considered henceforward as the same in the language of the French law of nations; and Great Britain has a right to consider that every nation who refuses to admit her flag upon the principle assumed admits and recognises the doctrine of the report.