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To my mind, sir, this insidious, this perfidious conduct, on the part of Napoleon, is infinitely more base, and merits the indignation of the American people infinitely more than would an open refusal to revoke the obnoxious decrees. It is an attempt, if I may be allowed the expression, to gull and deceive us, by an artful, intriguing policy, which ought to excite our jealousy, and rouse our highest resentments. I trust, sir, I have fairly shown that our faith is not plighted, that we are under no obligations to Napoleon. If in this I am correct, then the passage of the present bill is a mere question of policy and interest.

It would be a mere waste of time to attempt, by a reference to the past evils which have resulted from this restrictive system, to show the impolicy of its continuance. The bad effects already produced are but too well known. This, sir, is the favorable moment to erase it from your statute books; the policy and interest of the nation require it.

Let us examine, for a moment, the consequences of its continuance.

Do you believe, sir, that your merchants, a great portion of whose property has been seized by foreign nations, when the remnant of their vessels, which have escaped, shall, upon entering your own ports, be seized by your own custom-house officers, that they will be satisfied to lose the remainder of their property, in pursuance of your own laws? They will think it hard enough, that millions of their property have been seized by France, by Denmark, and by Sweden, without having the remainder seized on their return, and confiscated by their own Government. Surely, sir, they will require strong evidence of the fact that your faith is plighted to France, before they will be satisfied with the measure you are about to adopt.

Mr. Speaker, I am not the Representative of merchants; I feel no peculiar interest in their favor, but I consider them a useful class of citizens; their interests are closely connected with the interests of your farmers; and, in this point of view, they are at least entitled to notice. Hitherto, your merchants have been noted for their fairness, and for the respect they have paid to your revenue laws. But, sir, after having their property plundered by France, by Denmark, and Sweden, will they not, when they learn that from a scrupulous regard to your faith plighted to France, a faith, however, which has no existence, you seize, with a few exceptions, all which return; will they not, I repeat it, endeavor to land their cargoes so as to escape the vigilance of your officers? Have you no apprehension that, when they have once learnt the art of smuggling to save their property from seizure and confiscation, they will afterwards practise it, to avoid the payment of duties? I fear that this system will have a tendency to corrupt the morals of your merchants, and from them it will extend throughout the country.

Wednesday, February 27

The House formed a quorum at half-past ten o'clock.

Mr. Gold. – Mr. Speaker, at a period when the civilized world is convulsed by continued war, to its centre; when the European continent is exhibiting the marks of ruthless conquest, and is threatened with all that barbarism, with which Attila, with his invading hordes, overwhelmed the Roman world, it becomes the Councils of this nation to move with cautious steps on the theatre of our foreign relations; to move, sir, with a fixed eye on the great law of neutrality, and yield an implicit obedience to its high injunctions.

It eminently becomes, sir, the Government of this country, in all our concerns with the belligerents of Europe, to carry an even hand, to manifest to both a fair, impartial, and equal conduct. Without such a course, the consequences to our peace and prosperity, from the jealousy and violence of warring nations, are inevitable, and, with it, we can hardly promise ourselves exemption from aggressions and spoliation; such and so destructive is the spirit of the times. Need I, sir, to excite caution in legislation, refer the House to the consequences of the non-intercourse act of the 1st of March, 1809; for, however free from all exception from the belligerents was that act, yet France, in the wantonness of power, made it the pretext for the exercise of the rigorous right of reprisal by an additional decree, which, with the preceding, have, like the besom of destruction, swept our property from the ocean.

It was on that act, that the Rambouillet decree of the 23d of March last, was founded for its sole justification; and so do the very terms of the decree, shameful and disgraceful as it is, import.

In reviewing the proceedings of our Government under the act of the 1st of May last, (the act upon which the President's proclamation for a non-importation with Great Britain is founded,) permit me, sir, to ask if the spirit of a fair and impartial neutrality, so eminently necessary in the critical situation of the United States, has guided our proceedings with the respective belligerents? By this act, if either of the belligerents rescinded its edicts, violating our neutral rights, the non-intercourse act was to be put in force against the other refusing to rescind, and the President, by proclamation, was to declare such fact of rescinding. Under this provision, sir, the President substituted a prospective engagement for a fact done; a promise for a performance; the future for the past, and hence, sir, have resulted our present difficulties; that crisis which bears so hard upon the American people. It is not, sir, my object to impeach the motives of the President in this ill-fated proceeding; I am to presume a love of country guided him; but it is impossible not to see in the measure a course indulgent to France, a construction upon the letter of the Duke de Cadore, of the 5th of August last, (touching the revocation of the decrees of Berlin and Milan,) the most favorable and advantageous to that country, and offensive to Great Britain. For, sir, notwithstanding the above proclamation, the noon-day sun is not plainer than that those decrees are not revoked; nor indeed, sir, will they, in my opinion, ever be revoked under the above act. The utmost extent of our hopes, from the last despatches transmitting the official communication of the twenty-fifth of December last, from the Grand Judge Massa, and the Minister of Finance, Gaete, is, that our vessels (with their cargoes) seized in the ports of France since the first of November, in violation of the stipulation of the above letter of the 5th of August, and of all that is holden sacred among nations, may be at some future day, under some new and embarrassing conditions, flowing from the policy of Napoleon, restored to our suffering citizens. By the last paragraph of the above letter of the Minister of the Finances, it would seem that the Emperor and King has shut his eyes upon past engagements, and referred all that concerns us to the second day of February, when new toils are to be spread, as is to be presumed, for the unsuspecting, credulous, and confiding American merchant and navigator. Against the mass of evidence, that the French decrees are not revoked – evidence which is increased by the melancholy advices of every east wind – the honorable member (Mr. Rhea) from Tennessee, refers us to the President's proclamation, as a foundation for our faith in the repeal of the decrees to rest on; this is evidence indeed of things not seen. As well might the trembling mariner look to his almanac for the state of the weather at the moment the pitiless tempest is beating upon him, and his vessel is sinking under the shock of the elements. Whatever ground of hope or belief in the good faith of France existed at the time of issuing the proclamation, subsequent events have removed those grounds from under our feet, and blasted all our hopes; the wily policy of the French Court stands confessed; the Emperor loves but to chasten; he seduces but to destroy.

While the indulgent course, the favorable interpretation of the letter of Cadore of the 5th of August above mentioned, was adopted by the Cabinet towards France; was a similar temper and disposition manifested in relation to Great Britain?

I fear, sir, this part of the case will not well bear scrutiny. That the Orders in Council, and not the doctrine of blockade, were the objects of the act of the 1st of May, in relation to Great Britain, not only the debates of the period, but the recollection of every member of this House, will bear me out in asserting. That mere cruising blockades, and every other blockade not supported by an actual investing force, is unwarranted by the laws of nations, is my clear conviction; it is the result of examination and reflection on the subject; but unfounded in public law as is the doctrine set up by Great Britain, its abandonment or modification can only be expected from treaty, and not by an isolated declaration at the threshold, under the threat of a specific alternative. The Orders in Council being removed, the blockade of May, 1806, would have been little more than nominal; why then was it insisted on as indispensable, under the above act? Through a strange fatality, something, inconsiderable in itself, is always found in our demands upon Great Britain, to bar a settlement.

But, Mr. Speaker, what is calculated much more to put in jeopardy the neutral character of our Government is the bill on the table. While all is uncertainty and embarrassment with France; while her decrees remain merely suspended and not revoked; while your merchants, trusting to the plighted faith of the Emperor, have been drawn into the French ports and there betrayed and sacrificed; while commerce is bleeding at every pore under the merciless gripe of Napoleon, we are called on to go farther to conciliate France, than she was entitled to, had she faithfully revoked her decrees. Upon revoking his decrees, the Emperor was entitled to have the act of the 1st of May carried into effect against Great Britain, and he was entitled to no more. Such, sir, is the precise condition imposed on the United States by the letter of the Duke de Cadore, of the 5th of August, and this is the whole extent of the requirement. Upon what ground, then, sir, is it that we are called on to pass this additional non-importation act against Great Britain? If France has revoked her decrees, is not a non-importation with Great Britain inevitable, and does it not exist? But I will put the key to the door; let us not dissemble; France has not revoked, and for that cause and that alone, has the question arisen, whether there be at this time a legal non-importation with Great Britain. If, sir, there be any other difficulty, in the way of a non-importation with Great Britain; if there does exist any other possible obstacle, let the advocates of the bill name that obstacle. I make the appeal to gentlemen, I demand of the chairman of the committee who reported this bill, why and wherefore it is presented? France has failed to revoke her decrees, and as such revocation was, under the act of the first of May, a prerequisite to non-importation with Great Britain, such non-importation must fall, unless this additional act in favor of France is passed. This, sir, is the whole length and breadth of the case; and on no other ground can this disastrous measure be placed. If France revoked her decrees, she was entitled to a non-importation against Great Britain, and if she failed to revoke, what? The bill gives the answer – she is equally entitled; so that, do what France may do, the end must be a non-importation with England. Such, sir, is the logic of your bill; such the impartiality towards the belligerents; such and so barefaced the subversion of the great principle of the act of May last.

The principle of the act of May was just and equal; our offers to Great Britain and France were the same, and the result, in case of refusal, alike to both. France met the offer by the famous letter of Cadore, of the 5th of August; in which, with more than conjurer's skill, this disciple of the Jesuits brought together and united both present and future; he revoked and did not revoke; he gave up the decrees and yet retained their operation or effects; he made the revocation both absolute and conditional; absolute for obtaining the President's proclamation, conditional for the purpose of eluding performance; absolute for drawing our property within his clutches, conditional for retaining it, to fill his coffers and fatten his minions; in fine, sir, the letter was one thing, or another thing, or nothing at all, as artifice might suggest or future events render necessary.

But, sir, the most copious source of error that I have witnessed during the various debates upon the proceedings under the act of the 1st of May, is found in the extent of the Berlin and Milan decrees. The gentlemen who have commenced their career of conciliation with France, treated those decrees as operating only on the narrow ground of direct commerce between the United States and Great Britain and on our vessels to other ports which have submitted to British search; hence the effort to justify the late seizures of our vessels in France, upon grounds consistent with the repeal of those decrees, as being laden with British colonial produce, &c. But, sir, this cannot avail or give the least color to the pretence of a repeal.

The Berlin decree (that decree which emanated from the French Emperor at the capital of prostrate Prussia, where he sat like Marius over the ruins of Carthage) contains ten distinct articles; the 6th and 7th prohibit all trade in British merchandise, and, the more effectually to close all the avenues to the continent, exclude from the continental ports all vessels coming from Great Britain or her colonies, or that shall have visited the colonies after the date of the decree. The Duke de Cadore, by the above letter of the 5th of August, pledged the Emperor, his master, for the entire repeal of this decree without any reservation. Had this pledge been faithfully redeemed; had such repeal been had with good faith, it would have subverted the whole continental system and removed all difficulty both between the United States and France, and between us and Great Britain, as it must have produced the actual result required by Great Britain, in restoring the commerce of the world to that state it was in at the promulgation of the decrees. Although the above decrees partake of municipal as well as external regulation, yet the French Emperor, foreseeing that Great Britain would not relinquish the ground taken while the continental system, so hostile to her commercial interests, was continued, and yielding for a moment, as is supposed, to the groans of subjugated States, stipulated by the above letter for a relinquishment of his system by an entire repeal of those decrees. Let me repeat, sir, had France proved faithful to her engagements, the United States would at this moment have had a prosperous commerce with Europe, and the present state of things is fairly imputable to the Emperor, with whom that bill on your table invites us to proclaim "all is well." I look about me, sir, with emotions of concern and anxiety to find a ground on which to justify the course adopted by this bill towards the belligerents. The peace, the reputation, and honor of my country are concerned. While the great principles of justice and fair neutrality shall be our landmarks and guide, come what may, fall when we may, we shall stand justified to the world, and what is of more consequence, we shall have the support of our own consciences; the sweet and consoling reflection, that we stand clear of fault and deserve a better fate. This bill will not give the United States this high and enviable condition.

Mr. Pearson. – It is but seldom, Mr. Speaker, I address you, especially on subjects of the nature and importance of that which is now under discussion. Perhaps on this account, I may not be the less entitled to your indulgence and the attention of this assembly.

Being opposed to the principles of this bill, and having no confidence in the reasons or pretences by which it is attempted to be justified, I shall not trouble you with an exposition of its particular details, however novel, arbitrary, and impolitic they may appear. The bill proposes substantially a revival of that system of commercial restrictions, under which the people of our country have so long and severely suffered. It substantially denies all intercourse with Great Britain and her colonies, by excluding from our ports British vessels of every description, and the products and manufactures of that nation of every kind, and to whomsoever they belong; while at the same time, every possible indulgence is granted to France – her vessels, armed and unarmed, her products and those of the nations which she has subjugated, find no restraint from us. Here let me remark, that to those two contending powers, whenever their interest, or the interests of either of them come in contact with the interests of my own country, I feel no preference, I make no discrimination; my first best wishes ever are at home. I now solemnly appeal to gentlemen, why shall we, at this moment, make this marked distinction? Why shall we take this hostile attitude against Great Britain, and open our arms to the embrace of France – when, by doing so, we must inevitably afflict our own people, and depart from that character of neutrality, which has been the alleged boast of the present and late Administration; and which alone has afforded those in power an apology with the people for those wild schemes of policy, with which their course has been but too plainly marked, and that accumulated distress which every man has seen, and every honest man has felt? Can it be because Bonaparte has said he loves the Americans? I, sir, know no other cause. I know it has been said on this floor, and said too by the honorable gentleman who reported this bill, and his honorable colleague, (Mr. Gholson,) that the Berlin and Milan decrees are revoked; and, in compliance with the law of the late session of Congress, the faith of this nation is pledged to Bonaparte, for the due execution of that law against Great Britain. To those opinions my understanding cannot assent – the obligation to Bonaparte I neither feel nor believe. That none such exist will not, in my opinion, be difficult to prove. For a fair understanding of this question, it becomes necessary to apply to the law of May, 1810. On that law and the proceedings which have been subsequently adopted by this Government and France, must the propriety of the present measures be justified or condemned. The act alluded to, in substance, declares: "That in case either Great Britain or France shall, before the 3d day of March next, so revoke or modify her edicts, that they shall cease to violate the neutral commerce of the United States, which fact the President of the United States shall declare by proclamation, and if the other nation shall not, within three months thereafter, so revoke or modify her edicts in like manner, the restrictive provisions of the law of 1809 are to be revived and have full force and effect against the nation so refusing or neglecting to revoke or modify," &c., and the restrictions imposed by the act, are from the date of such proclamation, to cease and be discontinued in relation to the nation revoking or modifying her decrees in the manner aforesaid.

The emphatic words of this law are, so revoke or modify, as that they cease to violate, &c. Here is a positive, unconditional, indispensable prerequisite, to be complied with before the President was authorized to exercise the power given to him; a specific fact was to exist, and he was empowered simply to make its existence known to the nation; no discretion was allowed; nothing left to doubtful construction – no conditional promissory note of a perfidious agent, of a more perfidious master, was contemplated by the law. The great question now is, does the fact on which the proclamation was alone to issue, and on which its legitimacy solely depends, exist, or does it not? The very doubt ought to decide the question – the burden of proof unquestionably ought to rest on those who call on us to pass this law; and in their own language, execute the contract, and violate not the faith so solemnly plighted to "Napoleon the Great" – unfortunately the evidence on which they rely disproves the fact, and we are enabled to do what can seldom be done, and ought never to be required – prove a negative.

The letter of the Duke de Cadore, of the 5th August, 1810, the proclamation of the 2d of November, and Mr. Pinkney's diplomatic special pleading in his letter to the Secretary of State, of the 10th of December, constitute the whole burden of proof upon which the advocates of this bill rest their defence, and the evidence of the fact on which alone it can be justified. I have stated the law, and what I conceive to be its obligations on the President and ourselves. It will now be proper to take a correct view of this famous letter of the Duc de Cadore of the 5th August, this honeyed charm, which has seduced us into a labyrinth, from whose gloomy cells and devious windings we are, I fear, not soon to be extricated. This letter, which contains but one sentence of plain truth, viz: "That the Emperor applauded the general embargo laid by the United States" – after asserting the most palpable falsehood, by denying that the Emperor had knowledge of our law of March, 1809, until very lately, and justifying the seizure and condemnation of all American property which had entered, not only the ports of France, but those of Spain, Naples and Holland, dating from the 20th of May, 1809; and declaring that reprisal was a right commanded by the dignity of France, a circumstance on which it was impossible to make a compromise – the letter proceeds: "Now Congress retrace their steps, they revoke the act of the first of March, the ports of America are open to French commerce, and France is no longer interdicted to the Americans. In short, Congress engages to oppose itself to that one of the belligerent powers which should refuse to acknowledge the rights of neutrals. In this new state of things, I am authorized to declare to you, sir, that the decrees of Berlin and Milan are revoked, and that after the first of November they will cease to have effect; it being understood, that in consequence of this declaration, (remark, Mr. Speaker, this declaration, not this fact,) the English shall revoke their Orders in Council, and renounce the new principles of blockade, which they have wished to establish, or that the United States, conformable to the act you have just communicated, shall cause their rights to be respected by the English" – then follows in sweet accents His Majesty's declaration of love for the Americans, his solicitude for our prosperity, and the glory of France.

This is the gilded pill, in which lurks a most deadly venom, and which if we swallow, I fear all the political quackery of the nation cannot save us. On this letter, gentlemen rely for the revocation of the French edicts, and the freedom of our commerce with France. Allowing the most favorable construction to this letter, and abstracting it from circumstances and facts both before and after its date, it will not bear gentlemen out in their conclusion; it does not satisfy your law, and did not warrant the state of things which has been and is about to be produced. Instead of an existing and determined fact, we have a promise, and that too clogged with conditions, which it was well known to the Emperor would not or could not be complied with to the extent required by him. The conditions which depended on Great Britain, he knew, never would be yielded, and that which depended on ourselves was nothing short of war with England or our own citizens, by oppressing them with a perpetual embargo. Instead of an authenticated act of revocation, bearing the authority of the most ordinary law or edict of the French Empire, we have nothing but a letter from the agent of the Government, and which the Emperor may disavow at pleasure – as was done in the case of the Minister of Marine, in his explanations to General Armstrong of the intended operation of the Berlin decree – instead of the restoration of the immense amount of American property, of which your citizens have been most cruelly and unjustly robbed by this fell monster of the age – and which the President declared, through the Secretary of State, in letters to General Armstrong of the 5th of June and July, must precede an arrangement with France, and was an indispensable evidence of the just purpose of France towards the United States; instead of having forty or fifty millions' worth of our property restored, we are vauntingly told, that the property was confiscated as a measure of reprisal, that the principles of reprisal must be the law in that affair, and that a compromise would be inconsistent with the dignity of France – the plain English of which is, we have the property and we will keep it. Mr. Speaker, are we to be thus amused? Common honor and common sense revolt at the idea.

An honorable gentleman from South Carolina, (Mr. Cheves,) whom I am very much inclined to respect, in an ingenious argument which he made the other day, to prove that the French decrees were revoked, told you that the revocation of those decrees depended on the mere volition of the mind of the Emperor, not requiring authentication or form; and although they might be revived the next moment, or substituted by other regulations equally affecting our neutral rights, still they were revoked. Thus attributing an authority to Bonaparte, descriptive of the power of the God of nature – when he said, let there be light and there was light. And in reply to the gentleman from Massachusetts, (Mr. Quincy,) who contended that form was essential to the repeal of a decree, he remarked that the gentleman wanted form and not substance. From this course of reasoning, I conceive the gentleman has admitted, that this pretended revocation has neither form nor substance. An edict may be defined to be a law promulgated in such form as the institutions of the country require, or some act of sovereign authority, which has gone through the established forms of office, so as to become obligatory. The edicts of France have an appropriate form, their authority is attested by the Emperor and publicity is given, for the direction of those whose duty it is to carry them into effect. Sir, the decree of the most absolute monarch on earth is no decree till it is published. I contend that a revocation or modification of an edict requires the same or equal solemnities with its enactment; the fact must exist and be officially made known before it becomes obligatory – no declaration of an intention to revoke, can constitute an actual revocation. The act ought not only to be determined and public, but susceptible of authentication, and capable of being communicated to the nation and the world.

This opinion, if it needs authority, is supported by the instructions of the Secretary of State to our Ministers at Paris and London, of the 5th July. Mr. Pinkney is directed in these words – "If the British Government should accede to the overture contained in the act of Congress, by repealing or so modifying its edicts, as that they will cease to violate our neutral rights, you will transmit the repeal, properly authenticated, to General Armstrong, and if necessary, by a special messenger, and you will hasten to transmit it also to this Department – similar directions are given to General Armstrong."

Will it for a moment be contended, that the formal authentication required by the Administration, could mean a Jesuitical, insolent, equivocal, conditional letter, full of sound, and meaning nothing for our good? But, say gentlemen, the President received the evidence and issued his proclamation. This is true; but why has he done so, and how justified by the law under which alone he was authorized to act, is, to my mind, perfectly inexplicable; why, in the course of this arrangement with France, he has varied the ground which he first took – why dispensed with requisites at one time declared indispensable – why he advanced in exactions from Great Britain in proportion as he receded from demands on France, is left for himself and those who have more wisdom than myself, to determine. I trust, sir, I have a proper share of confidence in the Executive, and have no disposition to detract from his merit; but he is only man, and therefore subject to the frailties man is heir to. We have as yet no such maxim among us, as that the Executive is infallible – he can do no wrong. Whatever may be the disposition of other gentlemen, I am as yet too free, too much of a genuine Republican to subscribe to such a doctrine. I said, sir, that in the course of this arrangement with France, the Administration advanced in their demands on Great Britain and receded as to France.

I argue from the documents, which accompanied the President's Message at the opening of the present session of Congress. The first letter in the documents from the Secretary of State to Mr. Pinkney, of the 20th January, 1810, does not contain a word on the subject of blockades – on the contrary, the Orders in Council are alone required to be repealed, as preparatory to a treaty with Great Britain; and the British Government are assured of the cordial disposition "of the President to exercise any power with which he may be invested, to put an end to acts of Congress which would not be resorted to but for the Orders in Council, and at the same time of his determination to put them in force against France, in case her decrees should not also be repealed."

His letter of the 4th of May, which was the first after passing the act of the 1st of May last, that enclosed a copy of that act, is not published. On the 22d of May, another letter is sent enclosing a second copy of the act of Congress, in which there is not to be found any requisition of a repeal of the blockade which is now made a sine qua non to an arrangement with Great Britain. But on the 2d of July, after the arrival of the John Adams, which brought the correspondence between our Ministers at Paris and London, and the Agents of the British and French Governments, on the subject of the repeal of their several orders and decrees; and when it was known that the British Government would not abandon her system of blockade and adopt the principles contended for by France – in this letter, I say, is contained not only a demand of the repeal of the Orders in Council, but also of the blockading order of May, 1806. I have already shown, from the letters before me, of the 5th June and July, that the restoration of the property of our citizens, confiscated by the order of Bonaparte, was declared by the Executive as an indispensable prerequisite to an arrangement with the French Government. But the proclamation of the President has been issued without a cent of property being restored; nor is there the most distant prospect of our regaining a shilling from his iron grasp. Thus have the Administration changed the ground first taken, increased the demands on Great Britain, and abandoned what was deemed indispensable on the part of France.