fuppofe that we force her to a treaty of amity and commerce, acknowledging our rights to the utmost of our withes. How long will the keep it? Not an hour longer than fuits her convenience or intereft. There is no truft to be put in her compacts. Witnels Erfkine's arrangement. I fay keep on your reftrictionskeep the country in peace if poffible, under all your privations, and they are many. Hath not our country increafed in wealth and population, in a fuperior degree to any country on earth? Are we not at this moment in the enjoyment of peace and plenty at home Every man under his own vine and fig-tree and none to make him afraid, with complete protection for perfon and property? Yes; but our merchants must be protected. They have a right to our protection, fay fome; it is the merchant that gives life and fpring to agriculture. I deny it; it is the planter, the cultivator, that is the foundation on which every other branch of our affociated population depends, and it is the furplus of his productions that makes the merchant, and his profits that make the banks. You have made many laws for their protection; they have difobeyed them all, and will difobey them. Have they not told you continually to let them alone; that they knew their own bufinefs beft. Sir, before I would engage in a war to which I could not fee a profpect of a favorable iffue, I would let them alone. Sir, the Prefident is made by the conftitution the treaty making power; he is alfo to give us the ftate of the Union. He is the executive; he hath given us the ftate of the Union and made his requifitions; and if I give him what he asks I give him enough; and that I am willing to give, and more when be fhall require it. But I am not to be forced further yet. It appears. to me that the honorable committee hath a mind to Gideonize us, rejecting the fearful and faint hearted. Will they prove us by the waters, and reject all fuch as will not lap as the dog lappeth? For, fir, they have told us that all that did not intend to to vote for fuch ulterior measures as they might have occafion hereafter to bring forward, ought not to vote for the refolutions. Now, fir, it remains for me to tell them and the Houfe, that I will not leave the ranks of my country. I will vote for the refolutions and confider myfelf at liberty to vote hereafter as the nature of the cafe may require, and my confcience fhall direct. I have no more to fay at this time. [Debates to be continued.] 1 [Documents---Continued from No. 12.] Lord Wellesley to Mr. Pinkney. [Maried "private."] SIR Apsley House, February 23, 1811. I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your private* letter, under date the 17th instant. I take the liberty of referring you to my former unofficial letters and communications for an explanation of the motives which have induced this government, in pursuance of those amicable views which I have uniformly declared, to appoint a minister plenipotentiary to the United States. I have already assured you that the delay of that appointment was occasioned, in the first instance, by an anxious desire to make it in the manner which was likely to prove most acceptable to the United States. The appointment was recently delayed by the state of his majesty's government; and it has ultimately taken place in pursuance of the principles which I have repeatedly stated to you, and not in consequence of any change of system. It is perhaps unnecessary to repeat the desire of this government to relinquish the orders in council, whenever that measure can be adopted without involving the ne. cessity of surrendering the most important and valuable maritime rights and interests of the united kingdom. No objection has ever been stated, on the part of this government, to an amicable discussion of the principles of any blockade, which may be deemed exceptionable by the United States. I have expressed to you, without reserve, a desire to arrange the case of the Chesapeake on just and equitable principles; and I trust that no apprehension can be entertained of the general disposition of this government to adopt every reasonable measure, which may be necessary to conciliate the friendship of the United States. But it would be neither candid towards you, nor just towards this government, to countenance any interpretation of the motives of the late appointment, which might favor a supposition that it was intended by this government to relinquish any of the principles which I have so often endeavoured to explain to you. His royal highness' levee will take place on Tuesday the 26th instant; but I have received his commands to signify to such of the foreign ministers as may desire to have private audiences, that his royal highness will receive them on Thursday the 28th instant. The foreign ministers, however, will all be presented to his royal highness on Tuesday the 26th instant, on which day I shall attend for that purpose. I have the honor to be, with great respect and consideration, (Signed) *N. B. This is a mistake. ed brivate, nor intended to be so. WELLESLEY. Mr. Pinkney's letter was not mark- MY LORD, Mr. Pinkney to Lord Wellesley. Great Cumberland Place February, 23, 1811. I have had the honor to receive your private letter of this day's date. It only remains for me to inform your lordship that I have transmitted to the secretary of state of the United States, a copy of your official communication of the 15th instant, and of the unofficial paper which accompanied it; and that I will avail myself of the disposition of his royal highness, the prince regent, to give me an audience of leave on Thursday next the 28th of February, in pursuance of the request contained in my letter of the 13th instant, which referred to my letter of the 14th of January. I take the liberty to add that, until the time appointed for my audience, I will not trespass on his royal highness, for the purpose of being presented to him. I have the honor to be, with great respect and consideration, (Signed) WM. PINKNEY. Extract of a letter from Mr. Pinkney to Mr. Smith, Secretary of State, dated LONDON, March 1, 1811. "I had my audience of leave at Carlton house yesterday. "In the course of the short address which the occasion required, I stated to the prince regent the grounds upon which it had become my duty to take my leave, and to commit the business of the legation to a charge d'affaires; and I concluded by expressing my regret that my humble efforts, in the execution of the instructions of my government, to set to rights the embarrassed and disjointed relations of the two countries, had wholly failed, and that I saw no reason to expect that the great work of their reconciliation was likely to be accomplished through any other agency. The prince's reply was of course general; but I ought to say that (exclusively of phrases of courtesy) it contained explicit declarations of the most amicable views and feelings towards the United States. Lord Wellesley was the only person present at this audience. While I was in the outer room, waiting until the prince regent was ready to receive me, lord Wellesley told me that they intended to send out Mr. Foster immediately." Extract of a letter from Mr. Pinkney to the Secretary of State of the United States. Cowes, May 7, 1811. "I inclose duplicate copies (more legible than those transmitted in my letter of the 13th of March) of Mr. Russell's communications to me of the 1st, 11th, 13th and 80th of December last. They are necessary to account for, not the general character or substance of my late correspondence with lord Wellesley, but that particular part of the last paragraph of my letter to that nobleman, of the 14th of "The January, 1811, which is contained in the following words: information which I have lately received from the American legation at Paris, confirms what I have already stated, and I think proved to your lordship, that those decrees are repealed, and have ceased to have any effect." SIR, I have the honor to be, &c. &c. WM. PINKNEY. Mr. Ruffell to Mr. Pinkney. PARIS, December 1, 1811. As nothing has transpired here of sufficient importance to be communicated by a special messenger; and as no safe private conveyance has hitherto presented itself till now, to acknowledge the receipt of your letters under dates of the 7th and 28th of October; no event within my knowledge has occurred, either before or since the 1st of November, to vary the construction given by us to the very positive and precise assurances of the duke of Cadore on the 5th of August, relative to the revocation of the Berlin and Milan decrees. That these decrees have not been executed for an entire month on any vessel, arriving during that time, in any of the ports of France, may, when connected with the terms in which the revocation was announced, fortify the presumption that they have ceased to operate. I know of no better evidence than this, which the negative character of the case admits; or how the non-existence of an edict can be proved, except by the promulgation of its repeal, and its subsequent non-execution. Our attention here is turned towards England and the U. States. The performance of one of the conditions on which the revocation of the decrees was predicted, and which is essential to render it permanent, is anxiously expected. And it is devoutly to be wished that England, by evincing the sincerity of her former professions, may save the United States from the necessity of resorting to the measure which exclusively depends on them. I need not suggest to you the importance of transmitting hither, as soon as possible, any information of a decided character, which you may possess, relative to this subject; as an impatience is already betrayed here to learn that one or the other of these conditions has been performed. I am, sir, with great respect, your faithful servant. SIR, (Signed) JONA. RUSSELL. Mr. Ruffell to Mr. Pinkney. PARIS, December 11th, 1810. I have had the pleasure to receive your letter of the 22d ultimo by Mr. Page, and I thank you most sincerely for the papers which accompanied it. It is no where more necessary than at Paris, to hear both sides of a question in order to give a near guess at the truth. The way in which the story is told on your side of the channel, will enable me to correct many errors which it contains as told here. The obligations you confer on me this way I shall endeavor to discharge in kind. I wrote you a few days since by the way of Dieppe, and gave you the best statement of affairs here that the truth would warrant, in hopes that you might derive some advantage from it. I assure you I have felt disappointed, and grieved, at the conduct of the British ministry. If they distrusted the sincerity of their enemies, with regard to the revocation of the decrees here, still it would have been good policy to have appeared to believe them, and to have acted accordingly. By pursuing a different course, they have missed a golden opportunity of honorably repealing their offending orders, and, in so doing, to have proved at once their own sincerity and conciliated the good opinion of the United States. If the Essex frigate, which arrived on the 4th inst. at L'Orient in 28 days from Norfolk, has brought the president's proclamation in pursuance of the law of the first of May, the British ministry will be placed in an aukward situaation. They will have to persevere in their orders, at the expense of their veracity and at the hazard of war with the United States, or to withdraw them under very equivocal circumstances, which will give to their conduct the appearance of being rather the result of necessity than the dictate of principle. That the frigate has brought this proclamation there is good cause to suppose, from the time when she left the United States, being a few days subsequent to the period when the Berlin and Milan decrees were to cease to operate. If she has brought this proclamation, it will, without doubt, render absolute the revocation of those decrees, whatever uncertainty might have before attended it. There are probably, then, but a few days left in which the repeal of the British orders can appear to be the spontaneous act of the ministry; and I sincerely hope, that by properly improving this short period, they may do, with a good grace, what cannot be done afterwards in a way either to save their pride or deserve our friendship. Agreeably to your request, I shall change the file of the Journal de l'Empire, which I intended for you, for that of the Moniteur. I am, sir, very truly and respectfully, Your obedient servant. |