This expectation has not been fulfilled.
From the British Government no communication on the subject of the act
has been received. To a communication from our minister at London of a
revocation by the French Government of its Berlin and Milan decrees it
was answered that the British system would be relinquished as soon as
the repeal of the French decrees should have actually taken effect and
the commerce of neutral nations have been restored to the condition in
which it stood previously to the promulgation of those decrees. This
pledge, although it does not necessarily import, does not exclude the
intention of relinquishing, along with the orders in council, the
practice of those novel blockades which have a like effect of
interrupting our neutral commerce, and this further justice to the
United States is the rather to be looked for, inasmuch as the blockades
in question, being not more contrary to the established law of nations
than inconsistent with the rules of blockade formally recognized by
Great Britain herself, could have no alleged basis other than the plea
of retaliation alleged as the basis of the orders in council. Under the
modification of the original orders of November, 1807, into the orders
of April, 1809, there is, indeed, scarcely a nominal distinction between
the orders and the blockades. One of those illegitimate blockades,
bearing date in May, 1806, having been expressly avowed to be still
unrescinded, and to be in effect comprehended in the orders in council,
was too distinctly brought within the purview of the act of Congress not
to be comprehended in the explanation of the requisites to a compliance
with it.
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