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claim the act in force as the case should indicate. The French Government saw the opportunity offered by this unwise arrangement of Congress, and in August, 1810, the minister of foreign affairs notified General John Armstrong, the American representative in France, that the obnoxious decrees were revoked, and would cease in November, following. This step was taken on account of the recent act of Congress and with the condition that if Great Britain did not also comply, the Government of the United States should cause its rights to be respected by England. Napoleon knew that his great enemy would not comply, and believed he had the means, now unwittingly put into his hands, for setting England and America again at war. If there was a disposition on the part of Mr. Madison to make a choice between France and England, he was now in the way to do it to his liking. He accepted the equivocal language of the French Minister as to the repeal of the Berlin and Milan decrees, and in good faith issued the proclamation on the 1st of November, 1810, declaring the non-intercourse at an end. with France, and renewed and in force against England in three months if she did not repeal the "orders in council." But this England would not do. Bonaparte knew this, and the step he had taken in that direction was a sharp trick to bring England into another war. He had no design of carrying out his promise as to the decrees. And shortly afterwards American vessels were held for sequestration as before. The new French Minister to this country notified the Administration that France would not consider the question of indemnity for American vessels; and in March, 1811, Napoleon announced that the objectionable "de

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crees were the law of his empire. Mr. Madison urged England to take the step France had, and repeal her "orders in council." But the British Ministers were not so easily gulled by the very unsatisfactory pretension which she did not believe Napoleon ever meant to make good. The President had been too easily caught, and another direct step was taken towards war with England. Mr. Madison and his party were learning slowly that America's dear French ally cared for no interests but her own, and that all she ever did invest in America's welfare was solely in view of better subserving those same interests.

While John Adams and the Federal party wisely never believed in the pretensions of the French government, whoever constituted it, towards the United States, they were able to discriminate in behalf of the good wishes of a large per cent of the French people towards this country during the long struggle for independence. Even before an attempt was made to negotiate an alliance with France, Mr. Adams had correctly portrayed to the Continental Congress the motives which would actuate her in taking sides with this country, as well as clearly set forth the policy which should control America in dealing with her, a line of policy which finally became a fundamental law of this country in reference to all foreign nations. The party which opposed the Constitution, and during the inauguration of the Government under it, wildly espoused the cause of revolutionary France, and seemed to labor under the sense of an everlasting weight of gratitude which this country owed to the French, even at the risk of self-destruction, was not able when it came into the Administration to get on better with this

lovely transatlantic friend. And yet it was difficult for the Anti-Federalists to understand the French, and deal with other nations without the exhibition of some tendency to lean towards the old ally. The question of motives decides the true relations of nations, as well as of individuals. What becomes of the foundation for good-will and gratitude when selfish, ambitious, or evil purposes are discovered as the actuating motives of friendship? What can be said of the kindness and beneficence which feed the hungry, clothe the naked, or pamper the vain or foolish at the risk or loss of independence and virtue ?

Motives must ever be the true criterion of deeds and character. The friendship, so-called, which debases, or leads to corruption, injustice, and other evils, is intrinsically infernal. Nations are but complex men; and the train of reasoning which binds a single individual to a family or a community, applies equally well, on general principles, to international obligations. In the moral scale the simple community is an epitome of the whole social world.

The folly and wickedness of the French government and people were slowly effecting a radical change in the sentiments of the people of this country. Even the Republican leaders were accepting the early Federal theory that all foreign nations should be dealt with on the same principles. That no debt of gratitude remained anywhere unpaid where justice was ignored. France had, indeed, lost her political influence over this country, as also had Great Britain. And since the "War of 1812" there has been no division in political parties on this subject. This elementary principle of wisdom had been learned with great

difficulty by both British and French partisans in America.

In a letter to William Pinkney, Minister to England, dated at Washington, May 23, 1810, President Madison wrote in this language:

"With respect to the French Government, we are taught by experience to be equally distrustful. It will have, however, the same opportunity presented to it, with the British Government, of comparing the actual state of things with that which would be produced by a repeal of its decrees, and it is not easy to find any plausible motive to continue the former, as preferable to the latter. A worse state of things than the actual one could not exist for France, unless her preference be for a state of war. If she be sincere, either in her late propositions relative to a chronological revocation of illegal edicts against neutrals, or to a pledge from the United States not to submit to those of Great Britain, she ought at once to embrace the arrangement held out by Congress, the renewal of a non-intercourse with great Britain being the very species of resistance most analogous to her professed views."

CHAPTER XV.

MR. MADISON AS PRESIDENT-HIS SECOND ANNUAL MESSAGE-FLORIDA FILLIBUSTERING.

CON

ONGRESS again assembled on the 3d of December, and this short session ended on the 3d of the succeeding March.

The following is President's Madison's

SECOND ANNUAL MESSAGE.

December 5, 1810.

'FELLOW-CITIZENS OF THE SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES: "The embarrassments which have prevailed in our foreign relations, and so much employed the deliberations of Congress, make it a primary duty in meeting you to communicate whatever may have occurred in that branch of our national affairs.

"The act of the last session of Congress, concerning the commercial intercourse between the United States and Great Britain and France, and their dependencies, having invited in a new form a termination of their edicts against our neutral commerce, copies of the act were immediately forwarded to our ministers at London and Paris, with a view that its object might be within the early attention of the French and British governments.

"By the communication received through our minister at Paris it appeared that a knowledge of the act by the French government was followed by a declaration that the Berlin and Milan decrees were revoked, and would cease to have effect on the first day of November ensuing. These being the only known edicts of France within the description of the act, and the revocation of them being such that they ceased at that date to violate our neutral commerce, the fact, as prescribed by law, was announced by a proclamation bearing date the second day of November.

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