great, which have had a transitory effect. They wish to call the attention of the House to those of a permanent nature only, which intrench so deeply on our most important rights, and wound so extensively and vitally our best inte. rests, as could not fail to deprive the United States of the principal advantages of their revolution, if submitted to. The control of our commerce by Great Britain in regulating, at pleasure, and expelling it almost from the ocean; the oppressive manner in which these regulations have been carried into effect, by seizing and confiscating such of our vessels, with their cargoes, as were said to have violated her edicts, often without previous warning of their danger; the impressment of our citizens from on board our own vessels on the high seas, and elsewhere, and holding them in bondage till it suited the convenience of their oppressors to deliver them up, are encroachments of that high and dangerous tendency, which could not fail to produce that pernicious effect: nor would these be the only consequences that would result from it. The British government might, for a while, be satisfied with the ascendency thus gained over us, but its pretensions would soon increase. The proof which so complete and disgraceful a submission to its authority would afford of our degeneracy, could not fail to inspire confidence, that there was no limit to which its usurpations, and our degradation, might

not be carried.

Your committee, believing that the free born sons of America are worthy to enjoy the liberty which their fathers purchased at the price of so much blood and treasure, and seeing in the measures adopted by Great Britain, a course commenced and persisted in, which must lead to a loss of national character and independence, feel no hesitation in advising resistance by force; in which the Americans of the present day will prove to the enemy and to the world, that we have not only inherited that liberty which our fathers gave us, but also the will and power to maintain it. Relying on the patriotism of the nation, and confidently trusting that the Lord of Hosts will go with us to battle in a righteous cause, and crown our efforts with success, your committee recommend an immediate appeal to arms.

MESSAGE

FROM THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES TO CONGRESS. 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

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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