§ NO. I.—Letter from Mr. Secretary Canning to Mr. Pinkney; dated Feb. 22, 1808.
§ I have already had the honour of assuring you in conversation, of the disposition which is felt by the British government to give due weight to the observations which you have made to me, respecting the unfavourable impressions likely, in your opinion, to be excited in the United States, by the duty proposed to be levied upon cotton destined for the use of the enemy, but brought into the ports of this country conformably to the tenor of the Orders of Council of the 1lth Nov. last. —You are already apprized, that the principle upon which the whole of this measure has been framed, is that of refusing to the enemy those advantages of commerce which he has forbidden to this country. The simple method of enforcing this system of retaliation would have been, to follow the example of the enemy, by prohibiting altogether all commercial intercourse between him and other states.—It was from consideration of indulgence to neutral trade, that the more mitigated 242 measure of permitting intercourse under the restraints and regulations of a duty in transitu was adopted; and being adopted with this view, it was not immediately felt by the British government, that there might be a distinction taken by neutral states, with respect to articles the produce of their own soil; and that, while the commutation of prohibition into duty was acknowledged as an indulgence when applied to articles of foreign commerce, of which they were only the carriers, it might be considered as an invidious imposition when applied to their own productions. The moment that this distinction had been explained to the British government, they have been desirous of manifesting every attention to it; and if you, sir, had been possessed of the necessary authority from your government, there would have been no difficulty in entering into a specific agreement with you upon the subject. In order, however, to obviate this objection in a great degree, I have the honour to inform you, that it is intended to be proposed to parliament, that all cotton brought into this country, in conformity to the Orders of Council, should be absolutely prohibited from being exported to the territories of the enemy. But as you are not prepared to take upon yourself to say, that in no case the option would be acceptable, an option will still be left to the neutral owner, either to acquiesce in the total prohibition, or to re-export the article on the payment of such a duty as parliament may judge it expedient to impose.—1 flatter myself, sir, that this alteration in the legislative regulations, by which the Orders of Council are intended to be carried into execution, will be considered by you as a satisfactory evidence of the disposition of his majesty's government to consult the feelings, as well as the interests, of the United States, in any manner which may not impair the effect of that measure of commercial restriction, to which the necessity of repelling the injustice of his enemies has obliged his majesty reluctantly to have recourse. I have the honour to be, &c. (Signed) GEORGE CANNING.
§ No. II.—Note from Mr. Pinkney to Mr. Secretary Canning; dated Feb. 23, 1808.
§ Mr. Pinkney presents his compliments to his excellency Mr. Canning, and has the honour to acknowledge the receipt of his Note of yesterday, relative to an alteration on the subject of cotton in the legislative regulations, by which the late Orders 243 in Council are intended to be carried into execution, which Mr. Pinkney will hasten to transmit to his government. Mr. Pinkney requests Mr. Canning to accept. &c.
§ No. III. Letter from Mr. Erskine to James Madison, esq.; dated Washington, Feb. 23d 1808.
§ Sir, I have herewith the honour to transmit to you the copies of certain Orders of Council which his Majesty has thought proper to issue, in consequence of the hostile conduct of France towards the navigation and commerce of Great Britain and of neutral states.—His majesty has been induced hitherto to forbear recurring to measures of this nature, by the expectation that the governments of the neutral? states, who have been the objects of the French Decrees, would have been awakened to a just sense of what they owe to their interests and to their own rights, and would have interposed with effect either to prevent the execution of the French Decrees, or to procure their abrogation.—But his majesty having been disappointed in this just expectation, and perceiving that the neutral nations, so far from opposing any effectual resistance, have submitted to whatever regulations France may have prescribed for giving effect to her Decrees, can no longer refrain from having recourse to such measures as, by retorting on the enemy the inconveniences and evils produced by his injustice and violence, may afford the only remaining chance of putting an end to a system, the perseverance in which is not more injurious to his majesty's dominions than to nations not parties to the war between G. Britain and France.—The principle upon which his majesty finds himself compelled to proceed would justify a complete and unqualified retaliation, on his part, of the system announced and acted upon by France in respect to his majesty's dominions; and his majesty might therefore have declared in a state of rigorous and unmitigated blockade all the coasts and colonies of France and her allies. Such a measure, the maritime power of G. Britain would have enabled his majesty to enforce. Nor would those nations which have acquiesced, without effectual remonstrance, in the French Decree of Blockade, have derived any right from the more perfect execution of a corresponding determination, on the part of his majesty, to complain of his majesty's enforcing that measure, which the enemy has executed imperfectly only from want of the 244 means of execution.—His majesty, actuated, however, by the same sentiments of moderation by which his majesty's conduct has been uniformly governed, has been desirous of alleviating, as much as possible, the inconveniences necessarily brought upon neutral nations by a state of things so unfavourable to the commercial intercourse of the world; and has therefore anxiously considered what modifications it would be practicable to apply to the principle upon which he is compelled to act, which would not, at the same time that they might afford relief from the pressure of that principle upon neutral or friendly nations, impede or enfeeble its operation upon the enemy.—In pursuance of this desire, the Order in Council, which, if it had ended with the sixth paragraph, would have been no more than a strict and justifiable retaliation for the French Decree of November 1806, proceeds, as you will observe, sir, to provide mainy material exceptions, which are calculated to qualify the operation of the Order upon neutral nations in general, but which must be considered most peculiarly favourable to the particular interest of the United States—It will not escape you, sir, that by this Order in Council, thus modified and regulated, the direct intercourse of the United States with the colonies of the enemy is unrestrained; an indulgence which, when it is considered to be (as it really is) not only a mitigation of that principle of just reprisal upon which the order itself is framed, but a deviation; in favour of the United States, from that ancient and established principle of maritime law, by which the intercourse with the colonies of an enemy, in time of war, is limited to the extent which that enemy was accustomed in time of peace to prescribe for it, and which, by reference to the conduct of France in time of peace, would amount to a complete interdiction, cannot fail to afford to the American government a proof of the amicable disposition of his majesty towards the United States.—You will observe also, sir, that the transportation of the colonial produce of the enemy from the United States to Europe, instead of being altogether prohibited (which would have been the natural retaliation for the rigorous and universal prohibition of British produce and manufactures by France) is freely permitted to the ports of G. Britain, with the power of subsequently re-exporting it to any part of Europe under certain regulations. The object of these regulations 245 will be, the establishment of such a protecting duty as shall prevent the enemy from obtaining the produce of his own colonies at a cheaper rate than that of the colonies of G. Britain. In this duty it is evident that America is no otherwise concerned than as being to make an advance to that amount, for which it is in her own power amply to indemnify herself at the expence of the foreign consumer —Another most important relaxation of the principles upon which his majesty's Orders proceed, is that which licenses the importation of all flour and meal, and all grain, tobacco and other articles, the produce of the soil of America, with the exception of cotton, through the ports of his majesty's dominions into those of his enemies, with out the payment of any duty on the transit. This, sir, is, I beg leave to observe, an instance in which his majesty has deprived this measure of its most efficacious and hurtful operation against the enemy, through motives of consideration forthe interests of America.—The reason why his majesty could not feel himself at liberty, consistent with what was necessary for the execution of his purpose in any to lerable degree, to allow this relaxation to apply to cotton, is to be found in the great extent to which France has pushed the manufacture of that article, and the consequent embarrassment upon her trade, which a heavy impost upon cotton, as it passes through Great Britain to France,must necessarily produce.—I cannot refrain from calling the attention of the government of the United States to the contrast between the different modes in which his majesty's Orders and those of France are carried into execution. By his majesty's, the utmost consideration is manifested for the interests of those nations, whose commerce he is reluctantly compelled to impede, and ample time allowed for their becoming acquainted with the new regulations, and conforming to them; whereas France, without any previous notice, and without any interval, applies her Orders to trade already entered upon in ignorance of any such Orders, and subjects to condemnation ships, whose voyages, when commenced, were in strict conformity to all the regulations at that time promulgated by France.—Even with these, and other modifications, his majesty is not unaware that a measure, extorted from him by the injustice of the enemy, must inevitably produce inconveniences to the neutral parties who are affected by its operation. 246 —The right of his majesty to resort to retaliation cannot be questioned. The sufferings occasioned to neutral parties are incidental, and not of his majesty's seeking.—In the exercise of this undoubted right, his majesty has studiously endeavoured to avoid aggravating, unnecessarily, the inconveniences suffered by the neutral.—And I am commanded by his majesty especially to represent to the government of the United States, the earnest desire of his majesty to see the commerce of the world restored once more to that freedom, which is necessary for its prosperity; and his readiness to abandon the system, which has been forced upon him, whenever the enemy shall retract the principles whieh have rendered it necessary. —But his majesty entertains the conviction, upon which alone his present measures were founded, that it would be vain to hope for such a retraction until the enemy shall himself have been made to feel a portion of the evils which he has endeavoured to inflict upon others. I am, with great respect, &c. D. M. ERSKINE.
§ No. IV.—Letter from Mr. Madison to the hon. D. M. Erskine; dated Department of State, 25th March 1808.
§ Sir; Having laid before the President your letter of 23d of Feb. explaining the character of certain British Orders of Council, issued in November last, I proceed to communicate the observations and representations which will manifest to your government the sentiments of the President on so deep a violation of the Commerce and rights of the U. States.—These Orders interdict to neutral nations, or rather to the United States, now the only commercial nation in a state of neutrality, all commerce with the enemies of Great Britain, now nearly the whole commercial world, with certain exceptions only, and under certain regulations, but too evidently fashioned to the commercial, the manufacturing and the fiscal, policy of G. Britain, and on that account the more derogatory from the honour and independence of neutral nations.—The Orders are the more calculated to excite surprise in the U. States, as they have disregarded the remonstrances conveyed in my Letters of March 20th and 29th 1807, against another Order of Council, issued on a similar plea, in the month of Jan. 1807. To those just remonstrances, no answer was indeed ever given, whilst the Order has been continued in its pernicious operation against 247 the lawful commerce of the U. States; and we now find added to it others constituting still more ruinous depredations, without even the addition of any new pretext; and when, morecver, it is notorious, that the Order of January was of a nature greatly to overbalance in its effects any injuries to G. Britain that could be apprehended from the illegal operation of the French Decree, on which the Order was to retaliate, had that Decree, in its illegal operations, been actually applied to the U. States, and been acquiesced in by them.—The last Orders, like that of January, proceed on the most unsubstantial foundation. They assume for fact an acquiescence of the U. States in an unlawful application to them of the French Decree; and they assume for a principle, that the right of retaliation accruing to one belligerent against a neutral, through whom an injury is done by another belligerent, is not to have for its measure that of the injury received, but may be exercised in any extent, and under any modifications, which may suit the pleasure or policy of the complaining party.—The fact, sir, is unequivocally disowned. It is not tree that the U. States have acquiesced in an illegal operation of the French Decree. Nor is it even true that, at the date of the British Orders of Nov. 11th, a single application of that Decree to the commerce of the United States on the high seas, can be presumed to have been known to the British government—The French Decree in question has two distinct aspects; one clearly importing an intended operation within the territorial limits, as a local law; the other apparently importing an intended operation on the high seas.—Under the first aspect, the Decree, however otherwise objectionable, cannot be said to have violated the neutrality of the United States. If the governing powers on the continent of Europe choose to exclude from their ports British property or British productions, or neutral vessels proceeding from British ports, it is an act of sovereignty which the U. States have no right to controvert. The same sovereignty is exercised by Great Britain at all times, in peace as well as in war, towards her friends as her enemies. Her statute-book, presents a thousand illustrations.— It is only, therefore, under the other aspect of the Decree, that it can have violated neutral rights; and this would have resulted from its execution on the high seas, whether on the pretext of a 248 nominal blockade, or with the view to enforce a domestic regulation against foreign vessels, not within the domestic precincts, but under the authority and protection of the law of nations.—Had then the French Decree been executed on the high seas against the commerce of the U. States with G. Britain; and have the U. States acquiesced in the injurious and unlawful proceeding?—I state, sir, on undeniable authority, that the first instance in which that Decree was put in force against the neutral rights of the U. States, was that of the Horizon, an American ship bound from G. Britain to Lima, wrecked within the territorial jurisdiction of France, but condemned under an exposition of the Decree extending its operation to the high seas against neutrals. This judicial decision took place as late as the 30th of Oct. 1807; and was not officially known to the minister plenipotentiary of the U. States at Paris till some time in November. At the date, therefore, of the first Order of G. Britain, no injury whatever had been done to her, through an aggression on the commerce of the U. States; no presumption even had been sufficiently authorized, that the express stipulations in the Treaty of France with the U. States would not exempt their commerce at least from the operation of any edict incompatible with them. At the date even of the latter Orders of Nov. 1lth, it appears that the only aggression which had then occurred was, pretty certainly, unknown to the British government, and could therefore have had no share in producing this alledged retaliation.—To the fact, that the case of the ship Horizon was the first that occurred of an execution of the French Decree on the high seas, I am able to add, that as late as the 30th Nov., no other case had been brought into the French Court of Prizes. From accounts which have lately appeared, it is more than probable, that unlawful captures by French cruizers have since taken place; but it remains to be known, whether they are to be referred to the concurrence of the French government, in the judgment pronounced in the case of the Horizon, or not rather to a French Decree of the 17th Dec. last, purporting to be a retaliation on the British Orders of Nov. 11th.—I state with equal confidence, that at no time have the U. States acquiesced in violations of their neutral rights injurious to G. Britain, or any other belligerent nation; so far were 249 they in particular from acquiescing in the French Decree of Nov. 1806, that the moment it was known to their minister at Paris, he called for explanations of its meaning in relation to the U. States, which were favourable and uncontradicted by the actual operation of the Decree; that he steadily watched over the proceedings under it, with a readiness to interpose against any unlawful extension of them to the commerce of the U. States; that no time was lost, after the Decree came to the knowledge of the government here, in giving him proper instructions on the subject; that he was equally prompt, on receiving the decision of the court in the case of the Horizon, in presenting to the French government a remonstrance which can never be censured for want of energy; and that by the first opportunity after that decision reached the President, the particular instructions required by it were forwarded to that minister. Nor is it to be forgotten, that, previous to the British Orders of Nov., it had been explicitly communicated to the British government, by the American minister at London, that explanations, uncontradicted by any overt act, had been given to our minister at Paris, which justified a reliance, that the French Decree would not be put in force against the U. States; and that the communication was repeated to the British government, immediately on the publication of those Orders.—What more could have been required on the part of the U. States, to obviate retaliating pretensions of any sort on the part of G. Britain? Retaliations are measures of rigour in all cases, where they are to operate through a third and involuntary party. They will never be hastily resorted to by a magnanimous or just power, which will always allow to the third party its right to discuss the merits of the case, and will never permit itself to enforce its measures, without affording a reasonable time for the use of reasonable means for substituting another remedy. What would be the situation of neutral powers, if the first blow, levelled through them by one belligerent against another, was to leave them no choice, but between the retaliating vengeance of the latter and an instant declaration of war against the former?—Reason revolts against this as the sole alternative. The U. States could no more be bound to evade the British Orders by an immediate war with France, than they were bound to atone for the burning of the French ship of war 250 on the shore of North Carolina, by an immediate resort to arms against Great Britain.—With respect to the principle given in the British Orders, it is perfectly clear, that it could not justify them in the given to their operation, if the facts erroneously assumed could have been fully sustained.—Retaliation is a specific or equivalent return of injury for injury received; and where it is to operate through the interests of a third party, having no voluntary participation in the injury received, the return ought, as already observed, to be inflicted with the most forbearing hand.—This is the language of common sense, and the clearest equity. As the right to retaliate results from the wrongs suffered, it cannot, in the nature of things, extend beyond the extent of the suffering. There may often be a difficulty in applying this rule with exactness, and a reasonable latitude may be allowable on that consideration; but a manifest and extravagant departure from the rule can find no apology.—What then is the extent of the injury experienced by G. Britain from the measures of her enemies; so far as the operation of these measures, through the U. States, can render them in any sense responsible?—A mere declaration by a belligerent, without the intention or the means to carry it into effect, against the rights and obligations of a neutral nation, and thence against the interests of another belligerent, can afford no pretext to the latter to retaliate at the expence of the neutral. The declaration might give just offence to the neutral, but it would belong to him alone to decide on the course prescribed by the respect he owed to himself.—No real damage having accrued to the belligerent, no indemnity could accrue.—For the same reason, a declaration of a belligerent, which he. is known to be either not in a state, or not to intend to carry, but partially, into execution against a neutral, to the injury of another belligerent, could never give more than a right to a commensurate redress against the neutral. All remaining unexecuted, and evidently not to be executed, is merely ostensible, working no injury to any, unless it be in the disrespect to the neutral, to whom alone it belongs to resent or disregard it.—Bring the case before us to this plain and equitable test: the French Decree of Nov. 1800, undertook to declare the British Isles in a state of blockade, to be enforced, if you please, against the neutral commerce of 251 the U. States on the high seas, according to the faculty possessed for the purpose. As far as it was actually enforced, or an effect resulted from an apprehension that it could and would be enforced, it was an injury to G. Britain, for which, let it be supposed, the U. States were answerable. On the other hand, as far as it was not enforced, and evidently either would not or could not be enforced, no injury was experienced by G. Britain, and no remedy could lie against the U. States. Now, sir, it never was pretended that, at the date of the first British Order, issued in January 1807, any injury had occurred to, or was apprehended by, G. Britain, from the execution of the French Decree against the commerce of the U. States, on the theatre of their neutral rights; so far from it, that the Order stands self-condemned as a measure of retaliation, by expressly stating, that the fleets of France and her Allies, instead of being able to enforce the blockade of the British Isles, were themselves confined to their own ports by the entire superiority of the British Navy; converting thus, by the strangest of reasonings, the security of Great Britain against injury from the French Decree, into a title to commit injury on a neutral party. In the November Orders, also, whilst it is admitted that the French Decree could not be but imperfectly executed for want of means, it is asserted that the intention of the French Decree, and not the injury accruing from its operation through the commerce of the United States, is the scale by which the retaliating injury against them is to be measured. — Such are the pretexts, and such the principles, on which one great branch of the lawful commerce of this country became a victim to the first British Orders, and on which the last Orders are now sweeping from the ocean all its most, valuable remains.—Against such an unprecedented system of warfare on neutral rights and national independence, the common judgment, and common feelings of mankind, must for ever protest. — I touch, sir, with reluctance, the question, on which of the belligerent sides the invasion of neutral rights had its origin. As the U. States do not acquiesce in these by either, there could be no plea for involving them in the controversy; but as the British Orders have made the Decree of France, declaring, contrary to the law of nations, the British Islands in a state of blockade, the immediate foundation of their destructive warfare on our commerce, 252 it belongs to the subject to remind your government of the illegal interruptions and spoliations suffered, previous to that Decree, by the neutral commerce of the U. States, under the proceedings of British cruizers and courts, and for the most part in consequence of express orders of the government itself. Omitting proofs of inferior note, I refer to the extensive aggressions on the trade of the U. States, founded on the plea of blockades, never legally established according to received definitions, to the still more extensive violations of our commerce with the ports of her enemies, not pretended to be in a state of blockade, and to the British Order of Council issued near the commencement of the existing war.—This Order, besides its general interpolation against the established law of nations, is distinguished by a special ingredient, violating that law as recognized by the course of decisions in the British courts. It subjects to capture and condemnation all neutral vessels returning with lawful cargoes, on the sole consideration that they had, in their outward voyage, deposited contraband of war in an enemy's ports.—If the commerce of the U. States could therefore, in any case, be reasonably made the victim and the sport of mutual charges and reproaches between the belligerent parties, with respect to the priority of their aggressions on neutral commerce, G. Britain must look beyond the epoch she has chosen for illegal acts of her adversary, in support of the allegations on which she founds her retaliating edicts against our commerce.—But the U. States are given to understand, that the British government has, as a proof of its indulgent and amicable disposition towards them, mitigated the authorized rigour it might have given to its measures, by certain exceptions peculiarly favourably to the commercial interests of the U. States.—I forbear, sir, to express all the emotions with which such language, on such an occasion, is calculated to inspire a nation which cannot for a moment be unconscious of its rights, nor mistake, for an alleviation of wrongs, regulations, to admit the validity of which would be to assume badges of humiliation never worn by an independent power.—The first of these indulgences is a commercial intercourse with the dependencies of the enemies of G. Britain; and it is considered as being enhanced, by its being a deviation in favour of the U. States from the ancient and established principle of mari- 253 time law, prohibiting altogether such an intercourse in time of war.—Surely, sir, your government, in assuming this principle in such terms, in relation to the U. States, must have forgotten their repeated and formal protests against it, as these are to be found in the discussions and communications of their minister at London, as well as in explanations occasionally made on that subject to the British representative here. But permit me to ask more particularly, how it could have happened that the principle is characterized as an ancient and established one? I put the question the more freely, because it has never been denied that the principle, as asserted by the British government, was for the first time introduced during the war of 1756. It is in fact invariably cited and described, in all judicial and other official proceedings, as the rule of 1756. It can have no pretension to the title of an ancient rule. And instead of being an established rule or principle, it is well known that G. Britain is the only nation that has acted upon or otherwise given a sanction to it: nay, it is not even an established principle in the practice of G. Britain herself, when first applied in the war of 1756, the legality of a neutral trade with enemy's colonies was not contested by it. In certain cases only of the colonial trade, the allegation was, that the presumptive evidence arising from circumstances against the bonâ fide neutrality of the ownership, justified the condemnation, as of enemy's property. If the rule of condemnation was afterwards, during that war, converted into the principle now asserted, it could not possibly have been an operation, in its new shape, more than a very few years. During the succeeding war of 1773, it is admitted by every British authority, that the principle was never brought into operation; it may be regarded, in fact, as having been silently abandoned: and within the period of war, since its commencement in 1793, the planner in which the principle has been alternately contracted and extended, explained sometimes in one way, sometimes in another, rested now on this foundation, now on that, is no secret to those who have attended lo its history and progress in the British Orders of Council and the British Courts of Admiralty.—With the exception therefore of a period, the last in modem times from which authentic precedents of maritime law will be drawn, and throughout which the U. States, more in- 254 terested in the question than any other nation, have uniformly combated the innovation, the principle has not, in the British tribunals, been in operation for a longer time than three or four years, or five years, whilst in no others has it ever made its appearance, but to receive a decision protesting against it.—Such is the antiquity, and such the authority, of a principle, the deviations from which are held out as so many favours, consoling the U. States for the wide-spread destruction of their legitimate commerce.—What must be said as to the other exceptions, which seem to have been viewed as claims on the gratitude of the U. States? Is it an indulgence to them, in carrying on their trade with the whole continent of Europe, to be laid under the necessity of going first to a British port to accept a British licence, and to pay a tribute to the British exchequer, as if we had been reduced to the colonial situation which once imposed those monopolizing restraints? — What again must be said as to the other features, which we see blended on the face of these regulations? If the policy of them be to subject an enemy to privations, why are channels opened for a British trade with them, which are shut to a neutral trade? If in other cases the object be to admit a neutral trade with the enemy, why is it required that neutral vessels shall perform the ceremony of passing through a British port, when it can have no possible effect but the known and inevitable one of prohibiting the admission of the trade in the port of its destination?—I will not ask why a primary article of our productions and exports, Cotton Wool, is to be distinguished, in its transit, by a heavy impost not imposed on other articles; because it is frankly avowed in your explanation of the Orders, to be intended as an encouragement to British manufacturers, and a check to the rival ones of France. I suppress also, though without the same reason for it, the inquiry, why less rigorous restrictions are applied to the trade of the Barbary powers than are enforced against that of a nation such as the U. States, and in relations such as have existed between them and G. Britain.—I cannot pass without notice the very unwarrantable innovations contained in the two last of the Orders.—In one of them, a certificate of the local origin of a cargo, although permitted in the port of departure, and required in the port of destination, by regulations purely domestic in both, and strictly 255 analogous in principle to the regulations in the commercial code of G. Britain, is made a cause of capture on the high seas, and of condemnation in her maritime courts. In the other Order, the sale of a merchant ship by a belligerent owner to a neutral, although a transaction as legal, when fair, as a dealing in any other article, is condemned by a general rule, without an atom of proof or of presumption that the transfer in the particular case is fraudulent, and the property therefore left in an enemy.—In fine, sir, the President sees in the Edicts communicated by you, facts assumed which did not exist, principles asserted which never can be admitted, and, under the name of retaliation, measures transcending the limits reconcileable with facts and the principles, if both were as correct as they are unfounded. He sees, moreover, in the modification of this system, regulations violating equally our neutral rights and our national sovereignty. He persuades himself therefore that your government will see, in the justness of the observations now made, in addition to what I had the honour verbally to state to you in the first instance, that the U. States are well warranted in looking for a speedy revocation of a system which is every day augmenting the mass of injury, for which the United States have the best claims to redress.—I have the honour to be, &c. (Signed) JAMES MADDISON.
§ No. V.—Circular Note from Mr. Canning to Mr. Pinkney, announcing the Blockade of the Port of Copenhagen, and Ports of the Island of Zealand; dated May 4th, 1808.
§ Mr. Secretary Canning has the honour to inform Mr. Pinkney, that his majesty has judged it expedient to establish the most rigorous Blockade of the port of Copenhagen, and of all the other ports in the Island of Zealand. Mr. Pinkney is therefore requested to apprize the American consuls and merchants residing in England, that the entrances of all the ports above-mentioned are and must be considered as being in a state of Blockade; and that from this time all the measures authorized by the Law of Nations, and the respective Treaties between his majesty and the different neutral powers, will be adopted and executed with respect to all vessels attempting to violate the said Blockade after this notice. Mr. Secretary Canning requests, &c.
§ No. VI.—letter from Mr. Pinkney to Mr. 256 Secretary Canning; dated Great Cumberland Place, August 23d, 1808.
§ Sir; I have had the honour, in consequence of the orders of the Presideut, to recall your attention, in the course of several recent interviews, to the British Orders in Council of the 7th of January and 11th of Nov. 1807, and to the various other Orders founded upon or in execution of them; and I now take the liberty to renew, in the mode which I have understood to be indispensable, my instances on that subject-—I need scarcely remind you, sir, that the government of the U. States has never ceased to consider these Orders as violating its rights, and affecting most destructively its best interests, upon grounds wholly inadmissible both in principle and fact.—The Letters of Mr. Madison to Mr. Erskine, of the 20th and 29th of March 1807, produced by the official communication of that minister of the Order of the 7th of Jan. and the Answer of Mr. Madison of the 25th of March 1808, to a like communication of the Orders of the 11th of November, contained the most direct remonstrances against the system which these Orders introduce and execute, and expressed the confident expectations of the President that it would not be persisted in.—That expectation has not yet been fulfilled; but it has, notwithstanding, not been relinquished. The President is still persuaded that its accomplishment will result from a careful review by his majesty's government, made in the spirit of moderation and equity, of the facts and considerations which belong to the occasion.—It is not my purpose to recapitulate in that Note the statements and reasonings contained in the above-mentioned Letters of Mr. Madison, in support of the claim of the government of the United States, that the British Orders be revoked: I content myself with referring to those Letters for proofs, which it is not necessary to repeat, and for arguments, which I could not hope to improve.—But there are explanations which those Letters do not contain; and which it is not proper for me now to make. Even these, however, may be very briefly given, since you have already been made acquainted, in our late conversations, with all their bearings and details.—These explanations go to shew, that while every motive of justice conspires to produce a disposition to recall the Orders of which my government complains, it is become apparent that even their professed object will be 257 best attained by their revocation.—I had the honour to state to yon, sir, that it was the intention of the President, in case Great Britain repealed her Orders, as regarded the United States, to exercise the power vested in him by the Act of the last session of Congress, intitled, "an Act to authorize the President of the United States, under certain conditions, to suspend the operations of the Act laying an Embargo on all ships and vessels in the ports and harbours of the United States, and the several supplementary acts thereto," by suspending the Embargo law and its supplements as regards Great Britain.— I am authorized to give you this assurance in the most formal manner; and I trust that, upon impartial enquiry, it will be found to leave no inducement to perseverance in the British Orders, while it creates the most powerful inducements of equity and policy to abandon them.—On the score of justice, it does not seem possible to mistake the footing upon which this overture places the subject; and I venture to believe that in any other view, there is as little room for doubt.—If, as I purpose, your Orders should be rescinded as to the United States, and our Embargo rescinded as to Great Britain, the effect of these concurrent acts, will be, that the commercial intercourse of the two countries will be immediately resumed; while, if France should adhere to maxims and conduct derogatory to the neutral rights of the United States, the Embargo, continuing as to her, will take the place of your Orders, and lead with an efficacy not merely equal to theirs, but probably much greater, to all the consequences that ought to result from them.—On the other hand, if France should concur in respecting those rights, and commerce should thus regain its fair immunities, and the law of nations its just dominion, all the alledged purposes of the British Orders will have been at once fulfilled.—If I forbear to pursue these ideas through all the illustrations of which they are susceptible, it is because the personal conferences to which I have before alluded, as well as the obvious nature of the ideas themselves, render it unnecessary.—I cannot conclude this Note without expressing my sincere wish, that what I have now suggested, in conformity with the liberal sentiments and enlightened views of the Pesident, may contribute not only to remove the more immediate obstacles to the ordinary intercourse of trade between your country and mine, in a manner consistent 258 with the honour of both, but to prepare the way for a satisfactory adjustment of every question important to their future friendship.—I have the honour to be, &c.
§ (Signed) W. PINKNEY.
§ No. VII.—Mr. Secretary Canning's Note to Mr. Pinkney, of the 23rd September 1808.
§ The undersigned, his majesty's principal secretary of state for foreign affairs, had the honour to receive the official Letter addressed to him by Mr. Pinkney, minister plenipotentiary of the U. States, respecting the Orders in Council issued by his majesty on the 7th Jan. and 11th Nov. 1807.—He has laid that Letter before the king; and he is commanded to assure Mr. Pinkney, that the answer to the proposal which Mr. Pinkney was instructed to bring forward has been deferred only in the hope that the renewed application, which was understood to have been recently made by the government of the U. States to that of France, might, in the new state of things which has arisen in Europe, have met with such reception in France as would have rendered the compliance of his majesty with that proposal consistent as much with his majesty's own dignity, and with the interests of his people, as it would have been with his majesty's disposition towards the U. States.—Unhappily there is now no longer any reason to believe that such a hope is likely to be realized; and the undersigned is therefore commanded to communicate to Mr. Pinkney the decision which, under the circumstances as they stand, his majesty feels himself compelled, however unwillingly, to adopt.— The mitigated measure of retaliation, announced by his majesty in the Order in Council of the 7th of Jan., and the further extension of that measure, (an extension in operation but not in principle,) by the Orders in Council of November, were founded (as has been already repeatedly avowed by his majesty) on the unquestionable right of his majesty to retort upon the enemy the evils of his own injustice, and upon the consideration, that if third parties incidentally suffered by these retaliatory measures, they were to seek their redress from the power by whose original aggression that retaliation was occasioned.—His majesty sees nothing in the Embargo, laid on by the President of the U. States of America, which varies this original and simple state of the question.—If considered as a measure of impartial hostility against both belligerents, the Embargo appears to his majesty to 259 have been manifestly unjust—as, according to every principle of justice, that redress ought to have been first sought from the party originating the wrong; and his majesty cannot consent to buy off that hostility which America ought not to have extended to him, at the ex-pence of a concession made, not to America, but to France.—If, as it has more generally been represented by the government of the U. States, the Embargo is only to be considered as an innocent municipal regulation, which affects none but the U. States themselves, and with which no foreign state has any concern; viewed in this light, his majesty does not conceive that he has the right, or the pretension, to make any complaint of it; and he has made none. But in this light, there appears not only no reciprocity, but no assignable relation between the repeal, by the U. States, of a measure of voluntary self-restriction, and the surrender by his? majesty of his right of retaliation against his enemies.—The government of the U. States is not now to be informed, that the Berlin Decree of Nov. 21st, 1806, was the practical commencement of an attempt, not merely to check or impair the prosperity of G. Britain, but utterly to annihilate her political existence, through the ruin of her commercial prosperity; that, in this attempt, almost all the powers of the European continent have been compelled more or less to co-operate; and that the American Embargo, though most assuredly not intended to that end, (for America can have no real interest in the subversion of the British power, and her rulers are too enlightened to act, from any impulse, against the real interests of their country,) but by some unfortunate concurrence of circumstances, without any hostile intention, the American Embargo did come in aid of "the blockade of the European continent," precisely at the very moment when, if that blockade could have succeeded at all, this interposition of the American government would most effectually have contributed to its success.—To this universal combination, his majesty has opposed a temperate, but a determined retaliation upon the enemy; trusting that a firm resistance would defeat this project, but knowing that the smallest concession would infallibly encourage a perseverance in it.—The struggle has been viewed by other powers, not without an apprehension that it might be fatal to this country. The British government 260 has not disguised from itself, that the trial of such an experiment might be arduous and long, though it has never doubted of the final issue. But if that issue, such as the British government confidently anticipated, has providentially arrived much sooner than could even have been hoped; if the blockade of the continent, as it has been triumphantly styled by the enemy, is raised even before it had been well established; and if that system, of which extent and continuity were the vital principles, is broken up into fragments utterly harmless and contemptible, it is nevertheless important, in the highest degree, to the reputation of this country, (a reputation which constitutes a great part of her power,) that this disappointment of the hopes of her enemies should not have been purchased by any concession; that not a doubt should remain to distant times of her determination, and of her ability, to have continued her resistance; and that no step which could even mistakenly be construed into concession, should be taken on her part, while the smallest link of the confederacy remains undissolved, or while it can be a question whether the plan devised for her destruction has or has not either completely failed, or been unequivocally abandoned.—These considerations compel his majesty to adhere to the principles on which the Orders in Council of the 7th Jan. and the 11th of Nov. are founded, so long as France adheres to that system by which his majesty's retaliatory measures were occasioned and justified.—It is not improbable indeed that some alterations may be made in the Orders in Council, as they are at present framed; alterations calculated not to abate their spirit or impair their principle, but to adapt them more exactly to the different state of things which has fortunately grown up in Europe, and to combine all practicable relief to neutrals with a more severe pressure upon the enemy.—But of alterations to be made with this view only, it would be uncandid to take any advantage in the present discussion; however it might be hoped, that, in their practical effect, they might prove beneficial to America, provided the operation of the Embargo were not to prevent her from reaping that benefit.—It remains for the undersigned to take notice of the last paragraph of Mr. Pinkney's Letter. There cannot exist, on the part of Mr. Piukney, a stronger wish than there does on that of the undersigned, and of the 261 British government, for the adjustment of all the differences subsisting between the two countries. His majesty has no other disposition than to cultivate the most friendly intercourse with the U. States.— The undersigned is persuaded that Mr. Pinkney would be one of the last to imagine, what is often idly asserted, that the depression of any other country is necessary or serviceable to the prosperity of this. The prosperity of America is essentially the prosperity of G. Britain; and the strength and power of G. Britain are not for herself only, but for the world. When those adjustments shall take place, to which, though unfortunately not practicable at this moment, nor under the conditions prescribed by Mr. Pinkney, the undersigned nevertheless confidently looks forward, it will perhaps be no insecure pledge for the continuance of the good understanding between the two countries, that they will have learnt duly to appreciate each others friendship; and that it will not hereafter be imputed to G. Britain, either, on the one hand, that she envies American industry as prejudicial to British commerce, or, on the other hand, that she is compelled to court an intercourse with America as absolutely necessary to her own existence. —His majesty would not hesitate to contribute, in any manner in his power, to restore to the commerce of the U. States its wonted activity; and if it were possible to make any sacrifice for the repeal of the Embargo, without appearing to deprecate it as a measure of hostility, he would gladly have facilitated its removal as a measure of inconvenient restriction upon the American people.—The undersigned is commanded in conclusion to observe, that nothing is said in Mr. Pinkney's Letter of any intention to repeal the Proclamation, by which the ships of war of G. Britain are interdicted from all those right of hospitality in the ports of the U. States, which are freely allowed to the ships of his majesty's enemies.—The continuance of an interdiction which, under such circumstances, amounts so nearly to direct hostility, after the willingness professed and the attempt made by his majesty to remove the cause on which that measure had been originally founded, would afford but an inauspicious omen for the commencement of a system of mutual conciliation; and the omission of any notice of that measure, in the proposal which Mr. Pinkney has been instructed to bring forward, would have been of itself a ma- 262 terial defect in the overture of the President.—But the undersigned is commanded no further to dwell upon this subject, than for the purpose of assuring Mr. Pinkney, that on this and every other point in discussion between the two governments, his majesty earnestly desires the restoration of a perfect good understanding, and that his majesty would decline no measure for the attainment of that object, which should be compatible with his own honour and just rights, and with the interests of his people. The undersigned requests of Mr. Pinkney to accept, &c. (Signed)
§ GEORCE CANNING.