The Sun.
London, England, 1862-04-05 00:00:00

THE AN FRICAN BLOCKADE.

The last number of the Revue Contemporaine
contains a short article by M. Hautefeuille on the
questio❑ of the American blockade. It purports to
be an answer to the remarks of Lord Russell and
the S )licitor-General in Parliament on the Bth and
10th ult., and a correc►ion of what he states to be
an error in certain quotations from his work on
maritime law. The correction turns on the fact:
that, according to M. Hautefeuille, the declaration
of the Continental blockade of November 21, 1806,,
was preceded by hostile acts on the part of England,
and was merely an act of reprisal. After some gene-
ral observations on maritime law, M. Hautefeuille

says :
" We stated and proved in one of our works, by
quoting the documents, that the system known
under the name of Continental blockade was estab-
lished by Napoleon 1., Emperor of the French, as a
reprisal for the fictitious blockade decreed by Eng-
land against France and her allies. This fact is in-
contestable, although it was disputed some days
since. The Solicitor-General, in his speech in the
House of Commons, asserted that we committed a
serious mistake; that it was England which was
under the necessity of replying to iniquitous mea-
sures adopted by France by making use of fictitious
blockades. To prove this assertion he remarked
that the Berlin Decree which instituted the Conti-
nental blockade is dated the 21st of November,
1806, while the first of the British Orders in
Council which placed the whole coast of France
under a fictitious blockade is dated the 7th of
January,lBo7, and is consequently subsequent to the
French decree; whence it results, according to the
Solicitor-General, that it was France, and not Eng-
land, that took the first step in these serious mea-
sures, which ruined the trade of neutral Powers
and annihilated the independence of pacific nations.
The learned English lawyer even went so far as to
pretend that the proof of this fact is to be found in
the work which he did us the honour to quote. We
ask ourselves with astonishment how a person so
learned and holding so high an office could have com-
mitted so manifest an error. The English Minis-
terial speaker is not ignorant that fictitious block-
ades are not established by Orders in Council. He
knows perfectly well that what ho called ' diplo-
matic notifications' in his speech are often employed
for that purpose, The following are the facts,
which cannot be controverted. The documents are
at hand to prove their accuracy. On the 16th of
May, 1806—we request the honourable Solicitor-
General to remark the date—the 16th of May,
1806, Charles James Fox, Minister for Foreign
Affairs, acting in the name of the Kipg of Great
Britain, notified to all the Ministers and agents re-
presenting neutrals in London, that the coasts,
rivers, and ports from the mouth of the Elbe to the
port of Brest included, were placed in a state of
blockade, and should be considered as blockaded.
This important document ought to be known to
the learned Solicitor-General. It is to be found
in all the collections of the day, and we our-
selves quoted it previous to the Berlin Decree,
and before we spoke of the Order in Council of
the 7th of January, 1807. It must, moreover,
have left traces in the archives of the Foreign-
office, for it gave rise to very warm explanation
between the Cabinets of London and Washington. It
was during that debate that Mr. Forster, then
English Minister in America, in order to establish-
the validity of the blockade of 1806, alleged a
serious consideration, which the Solicitor-General
almost revived before the House of Commons. • Mr.
Fox said Mr. Forster did not notify the blockade
until he had been assured by the Lords of the Ad-
miralty that they had sufficient ships to enforce it,
and the intention to do so ; whence he concluded
that the blockade, resting on the possibility and the
intention, was perfectly regular. Thus, therefore,
without speaking of partial blockades established
on paper by various acts in the years 1805 and 1806
over the French colonies,—over the mouths of the
Ems, the Weser, the Elbe, the Trave, over the city
of Venice, &c., on the 16th of May, 1806, a fictitious
blockade was declared by England over the entire
coast comprised between the mouth of the Elbe and
the port of Brest inclusive. It was as a reprisal
for that act, and seven months and five days after-
wards, that the Emperor of the French issued the
Berlin Decree dated the 21st of November, 1806.
The British Orders in Council of the 7th of Janu-
ary and the 11th of November. 1807 (there are three
which bear the last date), enormously aggravated
the measures proclaimed by the Act of the 16th of
May, 1806, and provoked the French decree dated
the 12th December, 1807. Such is the real
history. We venture to hope that the Solicior-
' General will have the fairness to admit it,
and when again reading, with more care,
the work quoted by him in the House
of Commons, will state that all these documents
are referred to there in the order and date exactly'
as they were published. Is it necessary to correct
a similar error committed by an anonymous corre-
spondent in the limes? What we have already said
is quite sufficient, but we very much fear -not to
meet with fairness, because we have not met there
with the same courtesy. To mutilate passages
which one quotes, to suppress notes attached to
them in order to substitute other notes which refer
to other passages not quoted, is an easy mode of
discussion, and may have an ephemeral success
among the ignorant. It is not a method which
j will entitle a writer to the epithets he applied to us.
We are in his eyes ' simple persons.' Why cannot
we say the same of our contradictors ?
" HAUTEFEUILLE."