USA > Virginia > Prince Edward County > Prince Edward County > A history of Prince Edward County, Virginia: from its formation in 1753, to the present > Part 4
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It is true that in a postscript dated the fifth of July, (a month subsequent to the date of the letter to which it is appended, and seven months after his remonstrance to the French government) Mr. Russell states that orders had been given to cancel the bond in question. But surely this is no proof of the revocation of the decrees. Let us see what he says on the 15th of that month. "Although I was fully impressed with the importance of an early decision in favor of the captured vessels, none of which had been included in the list above mentioned"-("of the 16 vessels whose cargoes had been admitted by order of the Emperor"-probably un-
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der license) yet I deemed it proper to wait for a few days, before I made an application on the subject. On the 11th however, having learnt, at the council of prizes, that no new order had been received there"-(that on the 11th of July 1811, the French Admiralty Court had no notice of the re- peal of the decrees) "adjudged it to be my duty no longer to remain silent. I therefore, on that day addressed to the Duke of Bassano, my note with a list of American Vessels captured since the first of November. On the 15th I learnt that he had laid this note, with a general report, before the Emperor, but that his majesty declined taking any decision with re- gard to it, before it had been submitted to the council of commerce."
The House will take into consideration the distinction between the council of prizes, and admiralty court bound to decide according to the laws of the empire; and the coun- cil of commerce; which was of the nature of a board of trade; charged with the general superintendence of the concerns of commerce; occupied in devising regulations, not in expound- ing them; an institution altogether political; by no means judicial. His majesty then determined to consult his coun- cil of commerce, whether from motives of policy he should, or should not, grant a special exemption from the operation of his laws. In the same letter, learning from the Duke of Bassano that "the case of the brig Good Intent, must be car- ried before the Council of Prizes," Mr. Russell wishes to secure this case from this "inauspicuous mode of proceed- ing:" that is, from the operation of the law. Why? if the law, so dreaded, was repealed ?
"I had from time to time (he continues) informed my- self of the proceedings in regard to the captured vessels, and ascertained the fact that the Duke of Bassano had made a report in relation to them. The Emperor it appears, how- ever, still wished for the decision of his Council of Com- merce." What! to know if his decrees of Berlin and Milan
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were revoked? was his majesty ignorant of the fact? Can stronger evidence be adduced that they were in force, or can the release (not by courts of law, but by special executive interference) under peculiar circumstances, and after a long detention for violating those decrees, of a single vessel, es- tablish the fact of their repeal. On the contrary ought not the solitary exception (granting it to be one) to fortify the general rule?
In passing, it is worthy of remark that the French min- ister, being interrogated by Mr. Russell on the subject of our future commercial intercourse with France, "replied that no such communication would be made at Paris, but that Mr. Serrurier would be fully instructed on this head." The House would recollect how much had been expected of Mr. Serrurier on his arrival, and how much had been obtained. An ex-Secretary of the State even had the temerity to charge the President with having compelled him to desist from put- ting any interrogatories to the French minister on his ar- rival. But, be that as it may, one thing is certain, that appli- cation having been made to the minister, at the requisition of the Senate during the present session, he had declared an en- tire ignorance of everything relating to the subject.
To dissipate the last shadow of doubt on the question of the repeal of the French Decrees, Mr. Serrurier, in his letter of July 23, 1811, to the Secretary of State, expressly declares, that "the new dispositions of our government, expressed in the supplementary act of the 2nd of March last, having been officially communicated to his Court, his imperial majesty, as soon as he was made acquainted with them, directed that the American vessels sequestered in the ports of France since the 2nd of November, should be' released, orders were at the same time given to admit American vessels, laden with American produce !"
Under these circustances, whatever difference of opinion might exist as to the propriety of the President's Proclama-
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tion in the first instance, there could be none as to its revo- cation. As soon as it was ascertained, not only from the pro- ceedings of her cruizers on the high seas, but of her courts of law, and of her government, that France had acted, mala fide, towards this country, it surely became the duty of the President to recall that proclamation. He could have no doubt of his constitutional powers over the subject, having already exercised in a case not dissimilar. (Erskine's arrange- ment). That proclamation was the dividing line of our policy ; the root of our present evil. From that fatal proc- lamation we are to date our departure from that neutral position to which we had so long and so tenaciously adhered, and the accomplishment of the designs of France upon us. In issuing it the President had yielded to the deceitful over- tures of France; and it was worthy of observation how differ- ent a construction had already been put upon the act of non- intercourse (as it was commonly called) from that of May, 1810-although the words of the two acts were the same. In the first case, a modification of the decrees and orders of the belligerents, so that they should cease to violate our neutral rights was alone required. In the second, other matter was blended with them, although the words of the two acts were identically the same. This grew out of the insidious let- ter of the Duke of Cadore, the terms of which were accepted, with the conditions annexed, by the President of the United States. These conditions presented two alternatives: "That England should revoke her orders in council and abolish those principles of blockade which France alleged to be new, or that the United States should cause their flag to be respected by the English"-in other words, should become parties to the war on the side of France. In order to know what these principles were, the renunciation of which we were to re- quire at the instigation of France, it would be necessary to attend to the language of the French decrees. By these it would not be denied that principles, heretofore unheard of,
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were attempted to be "interpolated into the laws of nations." -Principles diametrically adverse to those which the govern- ment of the United States had repeatedly recognized in their correspondence with foreign powers as well as in their publick treaties, to be legitimate and incentestible. The French doctrine of blockade behind the only branch of the subject embraced in the Duke of Cadore's letter of the 5th of August, 1810, would alone be noticed. These required that the right of blockade be restricted "to fortified ports, invested by sea and by land .- That it should not extend to the mouths of rivers, harbours or places not fortified."
Under such definition the blockade of May 1806, other- wise called Mr. Fox's blockade, stood condemned-but Mr. Randolph had no hesitation in affirming that blockade to have been legal, agreeably to the long established princi- ples of national law, sanctioned by the United States. In Mr. Foster's letter of the 3rd of July last to Mr. Monroe, he says-"the blockade of May 1806 was notified by Mr. Sec- retary Fox on this principle ("that no blockade can be justifi- able or valid unless it be supported by an adequate force destined to maintain it and to expose to hazard all vessels attempting to evade its operation") nor was the blockade announced, until he had satisfied himself by a communica- tion with the board of Admiralty, that the Admiralty pos- sessed the means, and would employ them, of watching the whole coast from Brest to Elbe and of effectually enforcing the blockade.
"The blockade of May 1806, according to the doctrine main- tained by Great Britain, was just and lawful in its origin because it was supported both in intention and in fact, by an adequate naval force." In a subsequent part of the same letter it is distinctly averred that "that blockade was main- tained by a sufficient naval force:" and the doctrine of paper blockade is every where disclaimed in the correspondence, here as well as at London. "If (says Mr. Foster) ) the orders
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in council should be abrogated, the blockade of May 1806 could not continue under our construction of the law of na- tions, unless that blockade should be maintained by a due ap- plication of an adequate naval force." The same admission will be found in Marquis Wellesley's correspondence with Mr. Pinkney.
The coast of France from Brest to Calais is what seamen call an iron-bound coast. It had been blockaded in every war during the last century, that short period of the American War excepted, when England lost the mastery of the channel. No British minister would be suffered to hold his place, who should fail strictly to watch the opposite coast of France. Brest, her principal naval arsenal, protruded out into the Atlantic Ocean, confessed the want of suitable harbours for ships of war in the channels, while from Plymouth, Ports- mouth, and the mouth of the Thames, the opposite coast is easily watched and overawed. From Calais to the Elbe the coast is low, flat and shelving, difficult of access, affording few good inlets, indeed none except the Scheldt. The block- ade of this coast is as easy as that of Carolina. But it must not pass unnoticed that the blockade was in point of fact, (as appears from Mr. Monroe's letters to Mr. Madison of the 17th and 20th of May 1806) limited to a small extent of the coast between Havre and Ostend; neutrals being per- mitted to trade, freely, eastward of Ostend, and westward of the mouth of the Seine "except in articles contrabrand of war and enemies' property which are seizible without blockade." And Mr. Monroe, in announcing this very blockade of May 16, 1806, to his own government, speaks of it as a measure highly satisfactory to the commercial interests. And yet the re- moval of this blockade, against which Mr. Monroe did not remonstrate, of which there was no mention in the subse- quent arrangement of Mr. Erskine, which did not stand in the way of that arrangement of which no notice was taken in our proposition to England for a mutual abandonment of
.
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our embargo and her orders in council, is now by French device and contrivance to be made a sine qua non, an indis- pensable preliminary to all accommodation with Great Brit- ain !
Mr. Randolph had heard with sincere satisfaction many respectable gentlemen in the House and out of it, express a wish, that, by a revocation of the orders in council, the British ministry would put it in the power of our government to come to some adjustment of our differences with England. The position which he was about to lay down, and the proof of which the course of his argument had compelled him in some degree to anticipate, however it might startle persons of this description, was nevertheless susceptible of the most direct and positive evidence. Little did these gentlemen dream, but such was the indisputable fact, that their removal at this moment would not satisfy our administration. In Lord Wellesley's letter to Mr. Pinkney of Dec. 29, 1810, he says: "If nothing more had been required of G. Britain, for the purpose of securing the continuation of the repeal of the French decrees, than the repeal of our orders in coun- cil I should not have hesitated to declare the perfect readi- ness of this government to fulfill that condition. On these terms the British government has always been seriously dis- posed to repeal the orders in council. It appears however, not only by the letter of the French minister, but by your explanation, that the repeal of the orders in council will not satisfy either the French or the American governments. The British government is further required by the letter of the French minister to renounce those principles of blockade which the French government alleges to be new."
This fact is placed beyond a doubt, by Mr. Pinkney's answer of the 14th January, 1811. "If I comprehend the other parts of your Lordship's letter," says he, "they declare in effect that the British Government will repeal nothing out of the Orders in Council,"-and again, "It is certainly true
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that the American Government has required as indispensa- ble in the view of its acts of intercourse and non-intercourse, the annulment of the British blockade of May 1806."
Thus when the British Government stood pledged to repeal its Orders in Council, a question entirely distinct, has been dexterously mingled with it in our discussions with England; the renunciation of the right of blockade in the face of Mr. Madison's construction of the non-intercourse law, and of Mr. Smith's instructions to General Armstrong of July 5, and 2nd November, 1810, has been declared in- dispensable in the view of that act, and there is the fullest admission that more than the repeal of the Orders in Council was required; viz, of that blockade, against which we had not lifted our voice, until required to do so by France, which Mr. Monroe (so far from remonstrating against it, which would have been his duty to have done if illegal) consider it "as highly satisfactory to the commercial interests." A block- ade easy as would be that of the ports of Chesapeake, with a sufficient force stationed in Lynn Haven Bay. What is a legal blockade? A blockade with such force as renders the approach of merchant vessels dangerous.
Mark the wonderful facility with which Mr. Pinkney, not only blends the question of the blockade of May 1806, with the repeal of the Orders in Council; but his disposition to go, if he could, the whole length of the French doctrine of blockade; a doctrine unheard of before the reign of Bona- parte. "It is by no means clear that it may not fairly be contended on principle and early usage that a maritime blockade is incomplete with regard to states at peace, unless the place which it affects, is invested by land as well as by sea." And yet in the same letter he says, "You will imagine that the repeal is not to remain in force, unless the British government, in addition to the revocation of its Orders in Council, abandon its system of blockade. I am not conscious of having stated, as your Lordship seems to think, that this
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is so, and I believe in fact that it is otherwise. Even if it were admitted however, the Orders in Council ought never- theless to be revoked."
The American doctrine of blockade is expressly laid down in Mr. Smith's letter to Commodore Preble of the 4th of February, 1804. "Whenever therefore you shall have formed a blockade of the port of Tripoli ('so as to create an evident danger on entering it') you will have a right to capture for adjudication, any vessel that shall attempt to enter with a knowledge of the blockade." The very same doctrine against which, at the instigation of France, we are now about to plunge into war!
Mr. Randolph said he was compelled to omit many strik- ing proofs of his positions, from absolute weakness and in- ability, to read the voluminous extracts from the documents before him. If the offer should be made of a repeal of the Orders of Council which our people at home, good easy souls, supposed to be the only obstacle, the wound, as after the accommodation of the affair of the Chesapeake, would still remain incurable. He had not touched upon the subject of impressment, because, notwithstanding the use which had been made of it in that House and in the publick prints, it did not constitute, according to the showing of our own govern- ment, an obstacle to accommodation; (the orders in council and question of blockade being the avowed impediments) and because it appears from Mr. Monroe's letter of the 28th Feb- ruary 1808 "that the ground on which that interest was placed by the paper of the British commissioners of Nov. 8, 1806, and the explanations which accompanied it, was both honourable and advantageous to the United States. That it contained a concession in their favor on the part of Great Britain, on the great principle in contestation, never before made, by a formal, obligatory act of the government, which was highly favorable to their interests."
In fact the rejection of Mr. Monroe's treaty had alone
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prevented the settlement upon honourable terms, of this, as well as of every other topic of difference between the two governments.
He called the attention of the House to Mr. Smith's letter to Mr. Armstrong of July 5, 1810, requiring, in the name of the President, restitution of our plundered property as "a peliminary to accommodation between the two governments," -"As has been heretofore stated to you, a satisfactory pro- vision for restoring the property lately surprised and seized by the order, or at the instance of the French government must be combined with a repeal of the French edicts with a view to non-intercourse with Great Britian; such a provision being an indispensable evidence of the just purpose of France towards the U. States!" Yet no restitution had been made : "that affair is settled by the law of reprisal." What had been the language held on this floor and by ministers of state in official communications to committees of Congress? "that the return of the Hornet should be conclusive as to our relations with France. That if Mr. Barlow should not suc- ceed in attaining the most complete redress for the past and assurances for the future we would take the same stand against her as against Great Britain; that any uncertainty as to his success would be equivalent to the certainty of his failure." Such was the language held until the fact occurred, that NO satisfaction had been, or was likely to be obtained. Indeed, for some days after the arrival of the Hornet, these opinions had been maintained. They had however gradually died away and it was only within 48 hours past that a differ- ent language had been held. Was it necessary to remind the House of the shuffling conduct and policy of France toward us? Of the explanation attempted by DECREES, the min- ister of marine, in relation to the Berlin Decree and the sub- sequent annunciation of his government to Mr. Armstrong, with true French sang froid, that "as there was no excepting of the United States in the terms of the decrees, so there was
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no reason for excepting them from their operation." Have we forgotten Champagny's declaration of war in our name, "War exists then in fact between England and the United States and his majesty considers it as declared."-In short, for years past France has required us to make war with Eng- land as the price of undefined commercial concessions from her. We have been told "that we ought to tear to pieces the act of our independence-that we were more dependent than Jamaica-that we were without just political views, without energy, without honour, and that we must at last fight for interest, after having refused to fight for honour."
ยท France, whilst you required of her as a preliminary to further accommodation, the restitution of her plunder, de- coyed into her ports, required from you, as preliminary, a war with England. Mr. Barlow has now been ten months in France, dancing attendance upon her Court, without being able to obtain an answer to a few plain questions. Are your Decrees repealed ?- It is considered as improper to make the enquiry,-Instead of the edict, rescript, the instrument of re- peal, by whatsoever name it be called, he sends us the strict- ures of the French Government upon the proceedings of the American Congress; and a remonstrance to the Duke of Bassano, that the repeal of the Decrees (in which he is com- pelled to feign a belief, because the President's proclamation is the sole evidence of the fact) has not been given in charge to the French cruizers, but that the publick ships of war (Nymph and Medusa) continue to burn our vessels on the high seas. And what does the Duke of Bassano tell him in reply? The same old story of Champagny to General Arm- strong-"The United States will be entirely satisfied on the pending questions, and there will be no obstacle to their ob- taining the advantages they have in view, if they succeed in making their flag safe!" In other words, make war with England and you will be satisfied (and not until then) on the pending questions. And what are they? On one of them
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the required compensation for plunder,-your minister, after waiting for months for an oral answer, tells you, "This is dull work, hard to begin and difficult to execute." This is the claim too, required by Mr. Secretary Smith, under the President's order, to be satisfied as a preliminary to the acceptance of the overture of August 5, 1810! It is possible the Wasp may bring out something, just to hush up com- plaints until we are fairly embarked in war; into which, if we enter, it will be a war of submission to the mandates of a foreign Despot-the basest, the most unqualified, the most abject submission. France for years past has offered us terms (without specifying what they were) at the price of a war with England, which, hitherto we have rejected. That price must now be paid. The Emperor deals only for ready money - and carrying his jealousy further than in the case of the President's Proclamation (which he would not believe until its terms were fulfilled) he requires to be paid in hand before he will make his equivalent.
In the celebrated case of insult by implication, or insinua- tion, offered by Mr. Jackson, there existed in the Archives of the country, a monument (such as it was) to the insensibility of this House to that insult.
If under such circumstances, without having received any shadow of indemnity for the past, or security for the future- if indeed security could be given by the French Emperor- the United States becomes virtually a party to the war in his behalf, it must confirm beyond the possibility of doubt, every surmise that has gone abroad, however gross, however injurious to the honour or the interests of this government- that there exists in our councils an undue, a fatal French bias. After the declarations of official men, after the lan- guage uttered on that floor, if the U. States become parties to the war with France against her rival, it must establish as clearly as the existence of the sun above us-this event has not happened, and God forbid it should-but if it does, the
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conclusion will be irresistible, and this government will stand branded to the latest posterity, (unless the press should perish in the general wreck of human liberty) as the pan- dars of French despotism-as the tools, the minions, syco- phants, parasites of France. 'Twas to secure the country from this opprobrium that the proposition was about to be sub- mitted.
This is not like a war for a Spanish succession or a Dutch barrier; for the right of cutting logwood on a desert coast, or fishing in the Polar sea. It is war unexampled in the history of mankind-a war,-separated as we are from the theatre of it by a wide ocean-from which it behooves us to stand aloof-to set our backs to the wall and await the coming of the enemy, instead of rushing out at midnight in search of the disturbers of our rest, when a thousand dag- gers are pointed at our bosoms. But it is said we must fight for commerce-a war for commerce deprecated by all the commercial portion of our country, by New England and New York, the greatest holders of our navigation and capital !
(Mr. CALHOUN called to order; the question of war was not before the House. It was decided by Mr. Bibb, then in the chair, the Speaker having vacated a few minutes before that the objection was not valid, as the gentleman from Vir- ginia had announced his intention to conclude with a motion, and it had been usual in such cases, to permit a wide range of debate.)
Mr. Randolph thanked the gentleman from South Caro- lina for the respite which he had unintentionally given him, and which, in his exhausted situation, was highly grateful. This war for commercial rights is to be waged against the ex- press wish (constitutionally pronounced, spoken in langu- age which cannot be misunderstood) of the great commercial section of the United States-a war which must cut up com- merce by the roots; which, in its operation, must necessarily drive population and capital beyond the mountains.
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