And to entitle
these experiments to the more favorable consideration they were so
framed as to enable her to place her adversary under the exclusive
operation of them. To these appeals her Government has been equally
inflexible, as if willing to make sacrifices of every sort rather than
yield to the claims of justice or renounce the errors of a false pride.
Nay, so far were the attempts carried to overcome the attachment
of the British cabinet to its unjust edicts that it received every
encouragement within the competency of the executive branch of our
Government to expect that a repeal of them would be followed by a war
between the United States and France, unless the French edicts should
also be repealed. Even this communication, although silencing forever
the plea of a disposition in the United States to acquiesce in those
edicts originally the sole plea for them, received no attention.
If no other proof existed of a predetermination of the British
Government against a repeal of its orders, it might be found in the
correspondence of the minister plenipotentiary of the United States at
London and the British secretary for foreign affairs in 1810, on the
question whether the blockade of May, 1806, was considered as in force
or as not in force. It had been ascertained that the French Government,
which urged this blockade as the ground of its Berlin decree, was
willing in the event of its removal to repeal that decree, which, being
followed by alternate repeals of the other offensive edicts, might
abolish the whole system on both sides.
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