These documents will
place before Congress the actual posture of our relations with France.
JAMES MADISON.
WASHINGTON, _June 1, 1812_.
_To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States_:
I communicate to Congress certain documents, being a continuation of
those heretofore laid before them on the subject of our affairs with
Great Britain.
Without going back beyond the renewal in 1803 of the war in which
Great Britain is engaged, and omitting unrepaired wrongs of inferior
magnitude, the conduct of her Government presents a series of acts
hostile to the United States as an independent and neutral nation.
British cruisers have been in the continued practice of violating
the American flag on the great highway of nations, and of seizing
and carrying off persons sailing under it, not in the exercise of a
belligerent right founded on the law of nations against an enemy, but
of a municipal prerogative over British subjects. British jurisdiction
is thus extended to neutral vessels in a situation where no laws can
operate but the law of nations and the laws of the country to which the
vessels belong, and a self-redress is assumed which, if British subjects
were wrongfully detained and alone concerned, is that substitution of
force for a resort to the responsible sovereign which falls within
the definition of war.
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