extravagant to hold that the non-performance of one of them is equivalent to the non-performance of both. I shall take for granted, therefore, that the argument against my construction of the duke of Cadore's letter must be moulded into a new form. It must deal with two conditions instead of one, and considering them equally as conditions precedent to be performed (disjunctively) before the day limited for the operative commencement of the French repeal, must maintain that if neither of them should be performed before that day, the decrees were not to be revoked, and consequently that, as neither of them has been so performed, the decrees are still in force.

If this hypothesis of previous conditions, thus reduced to the only shape it can assume, be proved to be unsound, my construction is at once established; since it is only upon that hypothesis that any doubt can be raised against the exact and perspicuous assurance that the decrees were actually repealed, and that the repeal would become effectual on the first of November. This hypothesis is proved to be unsound, by the following consideration.

It has clearly no foundation in the phraseology of the paper, which does not contain a syllable to put any condition before the repeal. The repeal is represented as a step already taken, to have effect on a day specified. Certain consequences are, indeed, declared to be expected from this proceeding; but no day is given, either expressly or by implication, within which they are to happen. It is not said, "bien entendu que les Anglois auront revoque," &c. but "que les Anglois revoqueront," &c. indefinitely as to time.

The notion of conditions precedent is, therefore, to say the least of it, perfectly gratuitous. But it is also absurd. It drives us to the conclusion, that a palpable and notorious impossibility was intended to be prescribed as a condition, in a paper which they who think it was meant to deceive, must admit was meant to be plausible.

It was a palpable and notorious impossibility, that the United States should, before the first of November,execute any condition, no matter what the nature of it, the performance of which was to follow the ascertained failure of a condition to be executed by Great Britain at any time before the same first of November. That the act expected from the United States was to be consequent upon the failure of the other, is apparent. It is also apparent, that upon any

interpretation which would make the act of Great Britain a condition precedent to the French repeal, and consequently, precedent to the first of November (when the repeal was, if ever, to take effect) that condition could not be said to have failed before the whole period, from the fifth of August to the first of November, had elapsed. But if Great Britain had the whole time, within which to elect the course which she would pursue, what opportunity would be left to the United States (equally bound, upon this idea of conditions precedent, to act their part within the same period) to become acquainted with that election, and to decide upon and take their own course in consequence; to say nothing of the transmission of such intelligence of it to Europe as would be indispensable to the efficacy of the conditional revocation.

This general view would alone be sufficient to discredit the arbitrary construction under consideration. But it will be more completely exposed by an explanation of the nature of the act, which the latter professes to expect from the United States, in case Great Britain should omit to revoke. This act is the revival of the non-intercourse law against England, France remaining exempt from it, as well as from the provisions of the subsequent law, commonly called the non-intercourse act. Now, if it is too plain, upon the face of the last mentioned law (to which the letter expressly refers) to escape the most negligent and unskilful observer, that this revival could not, by any industry or chance, be accomplished before the time fixed for the cessation of the French decrees, or even for a considerable time afterwards, it certainly cannot be allowable to assume, that the revival was required by the letter (whatever was the object of the writer or his government) to precede the cessation. And if this was not required, it is incontrovertible that the cessation would, by the terms of the letter, take place on the appointed day, whether any of the events disjunctively specified had intervened or not.

The first step towards a revival of the non-intercourse against England would be the proclamation of the Presi. dent, that France had so revoked or modified her edicts, as that they ceased to violate the neutral commerce of the United States. But the letter of monsieur Champagny left the decrees, as it found them, up to the first of November, and consequently up to that day it could not, for any thing

contained in that letter, be said that the rights of American commerce were no longer infringed by them. A prospective proclamation, that they would cease to violate those rights, might, perhaps, be issued; but it could scarcelyhave any substantial operation, either in favour of France or to the prejudice of England, until the epoch to which it looked had arrived.

Let it be admitted, however, that all physical and legal obstacles to the issuing, before the first of November, of a proclamation, to take effect immediately, were out of the way-how would such a proceeding fulfil, of itself, the expectation that the United States would, before the first of November, "cause their rights to be respected by the English" in the mode pointed out in the letter, namely, by the enforcement of the non-intercourse law? The proclamation would work no direct or immediate consequence against England. Three months, from its date, must pass away before the non-intercourse law could revive against her; and when it did so, the revival would not be the effect of the proclamation, but of the continued adherence of England to her obnoxious system. Thus, even if a proclamation, effectual from its date, had been issued by the President on the day when the French declaration of repeal came to the hands of the American minister at Paris, the intercourse between the United States and Great Britain would, on the first of November, have remained in the same condition in which it was found in August. As all this was well understood by the government of France, the conclusion is, that its minister, professing too to have the American law before him and to expect only what was conformable with that law, did not intend to require the revival of the non-intercourse against England as a condition to be performed before the first of November.

It is worthy of remark, as introductory to another view of this subject, that even they who conclude that the repeal of the French decrees has failed, are not backward to ascribe to the French declaration a purpose utterly inconsistent with that conclusion. They suppose the purpose to have been to affect the existing relations between America and England, by the only means which the declaration states, the act of non-intercourse. And it is certain that unless England should abandon particular parts of her system, this was the result avowedly in view, and meant

to be accomplished. But there could be no hope of such a result without a previous effectual relinquishment of the French decrees. A case could not otherwise be made to exist (as the duke of Cadore was aware) for such an operation of the American law. To put the law before the revocation of the edicts was impossible. With the law in his hand it would have been miraculous ignorance not to know that it was the exact reverse of this which his paper must propose. He would derive this knowledge, not from that particular law only, but from the whole tenour and spirit of American proceedings, in that painful and anomalous dilemma, in which Great Britain and France, agreeing in nothing else, had recently combined to place the maritime interests of America. He would collect from those proceedings that, while those conflicting powers continued to rival each other in their aggressions upon neutral rights, the government of the United States would oppose itself impartially to both. The French declaration, then, had either no meaning at all, or it meant to announce to general Armstrong a positive revocation of the French edicts.

I should only fatigue your lordship by pursuing farther a point so plain and simple. I will therefore merely add to what I have already said on this branch of the subject, that the strong and unqualified communication from general Armstrong to me, mentioned in the commencement of this letter, and corroborated by subsequent communications (one of which I now lay before you) may perhaps, without any great effort of courtesy, be allowed to contain that "authentick intelligence" which your lordship is in search of. He could scarcely have been free from doubt if the occasion was calculated to suggest it, and if he had really doubted, would hardly have spoken to me with the confidence of conviction.

It only remains to speak of the practical effect of the French repeal. And here your lordship must suffer me to remind you that the orders of England in 1807, did not wait for the practical effect of the Berlin decree, nor linger till the obscurity, in which the meaning of that decree was supposed to be involved, should be cleared away by time or explanation. They came promptly after the decree itself, while it was not only ambiguous but inoperative, and raised upon an idle prohibition, and a yet more

idle declaration, which France had not attempted to enforce, and was notoriously incapable of enforcing, a vast scheme of oppression upon the seas, more destructive of all the acknowledged rights of peaceful states than history can parallel. This retaliation, as it was called, was so rapid that it was felt before the injury which was said to have provoked it; and yet, that injury, such as it was, was preceded by the practical assertion, on the part of Great Britain, of new and alarming principles of publick law, in the notification of the blockade of May, 1806, and in the judicial decisions of the year before. To uphold the retaliatory orders, every thing was presumed with a surprising facility. Not only was an impotent, unexecuted, and equivocal menace presumed to be an active scourge of the commerce of neutral nations, but the acquiescence of those nations was presumed, against the plainest evidence of facts.

The alacrity with which all this was done can never be remembered without regret and astonishment; but our regret and astonishment must increase, if, after four years have been given to the pernicious innovation, which these presumptions were to introduce and support, something like the same alacrity should not be displayed in seizing an honourable opportunity of discarding it for ever.

It is not unnatural to imagine that it will be discarded with pleasure, when it is considered, that having never been effectual as an instrument of hostility, it cannot now lay claim to those other recommendations for which it may have heretofore been prized. The orders in council* have passed through some important changes; but they have been steady, as long as it was possible, to the purpose which first impressed them a character not to be mistaken.

In their original plan, they comprehended not only France and such allied or dependent powers as had adopted the edict of Berlin, but such other nations as had merely excluded from their ports the commercial flag of England. This prodigious expansion of the system, was far beyond any intelligible standard of retaliation; but it soon appeared that neutrals might be permitted to traffick under certain restrictions, with all these different nations, provided