The Statesman.
London, England, 1812-01-04 00:00:00

AMERICAN CONGRESS.

THE COMMITTEE TO WHOM WAS REFERRED THAT PART
OF TUE PRESIDENT's SITsSAGE, WHICH RELATES TO
OUR FOREIGS AFFAIRS, EEG LEAVE TO REPORT IN.
PART—
Ti,at they have endeavoured to give to the subject
submitted to them, that full and dispassionate consi-
deration, which is due to one so intimately connected
with the interest, the peace, the safety, and the ho-
nour of 'their country.
Your Committee will not encumber your journals I
and waste your patience with a detailed history of all I
the various matters growing out of our foreign rela-
tions. The cold recital of wrougs, of injuries, and
aggressions, known and felt by every Member of this
Union, could hare no other effect than to deaden the
national sensibility, and render the public. mind cal-
lous to injuries with which it is already too familiar.
Without recurring, then, to the multiplied wrongs
of partial or temporary operation, of which we have
so just cause of complaint against the two great bel-
ligerents, your Committee will 'only call your atten-
tion, at this time, to the systematic aggression of
those powers, authorised by their edicts, against neu-
tral commerce; a system which, as regarded its prin-
ciples, was founded on pretensions that went to
the subversion of our na!ional independence; and
As/bleb, although now abandoned by one power, is,
in broad and destructive operation, as still en-
forced by the other, sapping the foundation of our
prosperity.
It is more than five years since England and
France, in violation of those principles of justice
slid public law, held sacred by all civilized nations,
commeticA this unprecedented system, by seizing the
property of the citizens of the United States, peace-
al)ly pursuing their lawful commerce on the high
sets. To shield themselves from the odium which
such outrage must incur, each of the belligerents
sought a pretext in the conduct of the other—each
attensptitig to justify his systcut of rapine as retalia-
tion for similar acts on the part of his enemy. As if
the law of nations, founded on the eternal rules of
justice, could sanction n principle, which, if engraft-
ed into our municipal code, would excuse the crime
of see robber, uptin the sole plea, that the unfortu-
nate object of his rapacity was also a victim to the
injustice of another. The fact of priority could be
true as to the one only of the parties ; and, whether
true or false, could furnish no ground of justitica-

Con.
The United States, thus unexpectedly and violent-
ly assailed by the two greatest powers in Europe,
withdrew their citizens and property from the ocean,
and cherishing the blessings of peace, although the
occasion would have fully justified war, sought re-
dress in en appeal to the justice and magnanimity of
the belligerents. When this appeal had failed of the
success which was due to its moderation, other mea-
sores, founded on the same pacific policy, but apply-
ing to the interests, instead of the justice, of the bel-
ligerent', were resorted to. Such was the character
of the Non-intercourse and 'Non-importation Laws,
which invited the return of both powers to their for-
mer state of amicable relations, by offering commit.-
cisl advantages to the one who should first revoke
his hostile edicts, and imposing restrictions upon the
other.
France, at length, availing lierself of the proffers
mad., equally to ber and her enemy, by the Non-
Importation Law of May, 1810, announced the re.
peal on the Ist of the following November, of the
Decrees of Berlin and Milan. And it affords a sub-
ject of sincere congratulation to be informed, through
the official organs of the Government, that those De-
crees are, so far at least as our rights are concerned,
really and practically at an end.
It was confidently expected, that this act on the
part of France would have been immediately followed
by a revocation on the part of Great Britain of her
Orders in Council.
If our reliance' on her justice had been impaired
by the wrongs she bad inflicted ; yet, .when she had
:plighted her faith to the world, that the sole mo-
tive of her aggression on neutral commerce was to
be found in the Berlin and Milan Decrees, we looked
forward to the extinction of those Decrees, as the
period when the freedom of the seas would be again
restored,
In this reasonable expectation we have, however,
been disappointed. A year has elapsed since the.
French Decrees were rescinded; and yet Great Bri-
tain, instead of retracting pari passu that course of
unjustifiable attack on neutral rights, in which she
professed to be only the reluctant follower of France,
has advanced with bolder and continually increasing
strides.
To the categorical demands lately made by oar
Goverameut for the repeal of her Orders in Council,
she has affected to deny the practical extinction of
the French Decrees ; and she hat, moreover, if&
vanced a new and unexpected demand, increasing in
hostility the Orders themselves. She has insistel,
through her aces .dited Minister at this place, that the
repeal of the Orders in Council must be preceded,
not only by the practical abandonment of the De-
crees of Berlin and Milan, so • far as they in-
tinge the neutral rights of the, United States • but,
by the renunciation on the part of France of: the
whole of her system of commercial warfare against
Great Britain, of • which those Decrees originally
formed a part.
This system is understood to consist in a course of
measures adopted by France, and the other powers
on the Continent, subject to or in alliance with her,
calculated to prevent the introduction into their ter-
. ritories of the products -and manufactures of Great
Britain and her Colonies, and to annihilate her trade
with them*. However hostile those resolutions may
he on the part of France towards Great Britain, or
however sensibly the latter may feel their effects,
they are, nevertheless, to be regarded only as the
expedients of one enemy against another, for which
the United States, as a neutral power, can in no re-
spect be responsible : they are, too, in exact con-
formity with those which Great Britain has herself
adopted and acted upon in time of peace as well as
war. And is it not to be presumed that France
would yield to the unauthorised demand of Americai-.
what she seems to have considered as one of the most
powerful engines of the present war.
Such are the pretensions upon which Great Britain
founds the violation of the maritime rights of the
Lulled States—pretensions not theoretical merely,