CHAPTER III.
In Canning’s note to Pinkney of Sept. 23, 1808,—the same paper which expressed his Majesty’s regret for the embargo “as a measure of inconvenient restriction upon the American people,”—a paragraph easily overlooked had been inserted to provide for future chances of fortune:—
“It is not improbable, indeed, that some alterations may be made in the Orders of Council as they are at present framed,—alterations calculated, not to abate their spirit or impair their principle, but to adapt them more exactly to the different state of things which has fortunately grown up in Europe, and to combine all practicable relief to neutrals with a more severe pressure upon the enemy. But of alterations to be made with this view only it would be uncandid to take any advantage in the present discussion, however it might be hoped that in their practical effect they might prove beneficial to America, provided the operation of the embargo were not to prevent her from reaping that benefit.”
This intended change in the orders depended on the political change which converted Spain from an enemy into an ally. Spencer Perceval did not care to press the cause of British commerce so far as to tax American wheat and salt-fish on their way to Spain and Portugal, where he must himself provide money to pay for them after they were bought by the army commissaries. Accordingly, in December, 1808, a new Order in Council appeared, doing away with the export duties lately imposed by Parliament on foreign articles passing through England. Thenceforward American wheat might be shipped at Liverpool for the Spanish peninsula without paying ten shillings a quarter to the British Treasury,[34] if only the embargo did not prevent American wheat from entering Liverpool at all.
In a short note, dated December 24, Canning enclosed to Pinkney a copy of the new order; and while taking care to explain that this measure conceded nothing in principle, he offered it as a step toward removing the most offensive, if not the most oppressive, restraint imposed on American commerce by the Orders of 1807:—
“As I have more than once understood from you that the part of the Orders in Council which this order goes to mitigate is that which was felt most sorely by the United States, I have great pleasure in being authorized to communicate it to you.”
Pinkney was in no humor to bear more of what he considered Canning’s bad taste, and he could have but one opinion of the measure which Canning announced. “This order is a shadow,” he wrote to Madison,[35] “and if meant to conciliate us, ridiculous.” His reply to Canning verged for the first time on abruptness, as though the moment were near when he meant to speak another language.
“It is perfectly true,” began Pinkney’s acknowledgment of Dec. 28, 1808,[36] “as the concluding paragraph of your letter supposes me to believe, that the United States have viewed with great sensibility the pretension of this Government (which, as a pretension, the present order reasserts without much if at all modifying its practical effect) to levy imposts upon their commerce, outward and inward, which the Orders in Council of the last year were to constrain to pass through British ports. But it is equally true that my Government has constantly protested against the entire system with which that pretension was connected, and has in consequence required the repeal, not the modification, of the British Orders in Council.”
This reception roused the temper of Canning, who could not understand, if Pinkney honestly wished harmony, why he should repel what might be taken as a kindness; yet the same reasons which induced him to make the advance impelled him to bear with the American minister’s roughness. The moment was ill adapted for more quarrels. Napoleon had occupied Madrid three weeks before, and was driving Sir John Moore’s army in headlong flight back to England; the dreams of midsummer had vanished; the overthrow of France was no nearer than before the Spanish uprising; the United States were seriously discussing war, and however loudly a few interested Englishmen might at times talk, the people of England never wanted war with the United States. Canning found himself obliged to suppress his irritation, and so far from checking the spirit of concession to America, was drawn into new and more decided advances. Spencer Perceval felt the same impulse, and of his own accord proposed other steps to his colleague, after Pinkney’s letter of December 28 had been read and considered by the Cabinet. With the impression of that letter fresh in the minds of both, Canning wrote to Perceval on the last day of the year:[37]—
“We have given quite proof enough of our determination to maintain our principle to enable us to relax, if in other respects advisable, without danger of being suspected of giving way. The paragraph in my letter to Pinkney, of September 23, prepares the world for any relaxations that we may think fit to make, provided they are coupled with increased severity against France; and though this last consideration is something impaired by my last communication to Pinkney, yet the manner in which he has received that communication (with respect to which reception I partake of the fury which you describe as having been kindled in Hammond) leaves us quite at liberty to take any new steps without explanation, and exempts us from any hazard of seeing them too well received.”
The year 1809 began with this new spirit of accommodation in British councils. The causes which produced it were notorious. From the moment Europe closed her ports, in the autumn of 1807, articles commonly supplied from the Continent rose to speculative prices, and after the American embargo the same effect followed with American produce. Flax, linseed, tallow, timber, Spanish wool, silk, hemp, American cotton doubled or trebled in price in the English markets during the years 1807 and 1808.[38] Colonial produce declined in the same proportion. Quantities of sugar and coffee overfilled the warehouses of London, while the same articles could not be bought at Amsterdam and Antwerp at prices three, four, and five times those asked on the Royal Exchange. Under the Orders in Council, the whole produce of the West Indies, shut from Europe by Napoleon and from the United States by the embargo, was brought to England, until mere plethora stopped accumulation.
Debarred from their natural outlets, English merchandise and manufactures were forced into every other market which seemed to offer a hope of sale or barter. When Portugal fell into Napoleon’s hands, and the royal family took refuge in Brazil under British protection, English merchants glutted Brazil with their goods, until the beach at Rio Janeiro was covered with property, which perished for want of buyers and warehouses. The Spanish trade, thrown open soon afterward, resulted in similar losses. In the effort to relieve the plethora at home, England gorged the few small channels of commerce that remained in her control.
These efforts coincided with a drain of specie on government account to support the Spanish patriots. The British armies sent to Spain required large sums in coin for their supplies, and the Spaniards required every kind of assistance. The process of paying money on every hand and receiving nothing but worthless produce could not long continue without turning the exchanges against London; yet a sudden call for specie threatened to shake the foundations of society. Never was credit so rotten. Speculation was rampant, and inflation accompanied it. None of the familiar signs of financial disaster were absent. Visionary joint-stock enterprises flourished. Discounts at long date, or without regard to proper security, could be obtained with ease from the private banks and bankers who were competing for business; and although the Bank of England followed its usual course, neither contracting nor expanding its loans and issues, suddenly, at the close of 1808, gold coin rose at a leap from a nominal rate of 103 to the alarming premium of 113. The exchanges had turned, and the inevitable crash was near.
The political outlook took the same sombre tone as the finances. The failure of the Spaniards and the evacuation of Spain by the British army after the loss of Sir John Moore at Corunna, January 16, destroyed confidence in all political hopes. Lord Castlereagh, as war-secretary, was most exposed to attack. Instead of defending him, Canning set the example of weakening his influence. Aware that the Administration had not the capacity to hold its own, Canning undertook to reform it. As early as October, 1808, he talked freely of Castlereagh’s incompetence, and made no secret of his opinion that the Secretary for War must go out.[39] Whether his judgment of Castlereagh’s abilities were right or wrong was a matter for English history to decide; but Americans might at least wonder that the Convention of Cintra and the campaign of Sir John Moore were not held to be achievements as respectable as the American diplomacy of Canning or the commercial experiments of Spencer Perceval. Canning himself agreed that Perceval was little, if at all, superior to Castlereagh, and he saw hope for England chiefly in his own elevation to the post of the Duke of Portland.
Although no one fully understood all that had been done by the Portland ministry, enough was known to render their fall certain; and Canning saw himself sinking with the rest. He made active efforts to secure his own safety and to rise above the misfortunes which threatened to overwhelm his colleagues. Among other annoyances, he felt the recoil of his American policy. The tone taken by Pinkney coincided with the warlike threats reported by Erskine, and with the language of Campbell’s Report to the House of Representatives. Erskine’s despatch of November 26, in which Campbell’s Report was enclosed, and his alarming despatches of December 3 and 4 were received by Canning about the middle of January,[40] at a time when the Ministry was sustained only by royal favor. The language and the threats of these advices were such as Canning could not with dignity overlook or with safety resent; but he overlooked them. January 18, at a diplomatic dinner given by him on the Queen’s birthday, he took Pinkney aside to tell him that the Ministry were willing to consider the Resolutions proposed in Campbell’s Report as putting an end to the difficulties which prevented a satisfactory arrangement.[41] Pinkney, surprised by Canning’s “more than usual kindness and respect,” suggested deferring the subject to a better occasion; and Canning readily acquiesced, appointing January 22 as the day for an interview.
The next morning, January 19, Parliament met, and American affairs were instantly made the subject of attack on ministers. In the Lords, Grenville declared that “the insulting and sophistical answer” returned by Canning to the American offer, persuaded him “that the intention of the King’s government is to drive things to extremity with America.” Lord Hawkesbury the Home Secretary, who had succeeded his father as Earl of Liverpool, replied in the old tone that ministers felt no disposition to irritate America, but that national dignity and importance were not to be sacrificed “at the very moment when America seemed so blind to her own interest, and betrayed so decided a partiality in favor of France.”[42] In the Commons, Whitbread and the other leaders of opposition echoed the attack, but Canning did not echo the reply.
“The same infatuation,” said Whitbread,[43] “seems now to prevail that existed in the time of the late American war. There were the same taunts, the same sarcasms, and the same assertions that America cannot do without us.” Only a few weeks earlier or later, Canning would have met such criticisms in his loftiest tone, and with more reason than in 1807 or in 1808. In his desk were Erskine’s latest despatches, announcing impending war in every accent of defiance and in many varieties of italics and capital letters; fresh in his memory was his own official pledge that “no step which could even mistakenly be construed into concession should be taken” while a doubt existed whether America had wholly abandoned her attempt at commercial restriction. Yet instead of maintaining England’s authority at the moment when for the first time it was threatened by the United States, Canning became apologetic and yielding. Repeating the commonplaces of the newspapers that America had sided with France, and even going so far as to assert, what he best knew to be an error, that the Orders in Council had not been the cause of the embargo, and “it was now a notorious fact that no such ground had been laid for the embargo;” after declaring the exclusion of British war-vessels from American harbors to have been the chief obstacle to the compromise offered by America,—treading, with what seemed a very uncertain foot, among these slippery and ill-balanced stepping-stones, he reached the point where he meant to rest. The “Chesapeake” Proclamation, which excluded British war-ships from American harbors, being his chief grievance, any settlement which removed that grievance would be so far satisfactory; and for this reason the measures proposed in Campbell’s Report, though clothed in hostile language, might, if made known to the British government in amicable terms, have led to the acceptance of the compromise proposed, since they excluded French as well as English ships of war from American ports.
Canning next turned to Pinkney to ascertain how much concession would be safe. The interview took place January 22; but Pinkney’s powers had been withdrawn, and he neither could nor would furnish Canning with any assurance on which a concession could be offered with the certainty either that it would be accepted, or that it would be refused. Canning seemed particularly anxious to know how the embargo could be effectually enforced against commerce with France, after being removed in regard to England.[44] He “presumed that the government of the United States would not complain if the naval force of this country should assist in preventing such a commerce.”[45] Pinkney felt many doubts of Canning’s good faith,[46] and had every reason for avoiding committal of himself or of his Government. According to his own account, he declined to enter into the discussion of details, and confined himself to general encouragement of Canning’s good disposition.[47]
After experimenting upon Pinkney, much as he had sounded Parliament, Canning lost not an hour in composing the new instructions to Erskine. Four in number, all bearing the same date of January 23, they dealt successively with each of the disputed points; but in order to understand the embroilment they caused, readers must carry in mind, even at some effort of memory, precisely what Canning ordered Erskine to do, and precisely what Erskine did.
The first instruction dealt with the “Chesapeake” affair, and the Proclamation occasioned by it. Accepting Gallatin’s idea that the Proclamation being merged in the general non-intercourse would cease to exist as a special and separate provision of law, Canning instructed Erskine that if French ships of war should be excluded from American ports, and if the Proclamation should be tacitly withdrawn, he need no longer insist upon the formal recall. Further, Gallatin had suggested that Congress was about to exclude foreign seamen by law from national ships; and Canning admitted also this evasion of his demand that the United States should engage not to countenance desertions. Finally, he withdrew the demand for disavowals which had wrecked Rose’s mission.
Evidently the British government wished to settle the “Chesapeake” affair. Had Canning in like manner swept away his old conditions precedent to withdrawal of the Orders in Council, his good faith would have been above suspicion; but he approached that subject in a different spirit, and imposed one condition after another while he adopted the unusual course of putting each new condition into the mouth of some American official. He drew from Erskine’s despatches the inference that Madison, Smith, and Gallatin were willing to recognize in express terms the validity of the British “Rule of 1756.”[48] For this misunderstanding Erskine was to blame,[49] but Canning was alone responsible for the next remark, that “Mr. Pinkney has recently, but for the first time, expressed to me his opinion that there will be no indisposition on the part of his Government to the enforcement, by the naval power of Great Britain,” of the Act of Congress declaring non-intercourse with France. On the strength of these supposed expressions of William Pinkney, Madison, Smith, and Gallatin, none of which was official or in writing, Canning concluded:—
“I flatter myself that there will be no difficulty in obtaining a distinct and official recognition of these conditions from the American government. For this purpose you are at liberty to communicate this despatch in extenso to the American government.”
The chief interest of these instructions lay in the question whether Canning meant in good faith to offer on any conditions a withdrawal of the Orders in Council. The course of his own acts and of Perceval’s measures, suggested that he did not intend to offer any terms which the United States could accept. His remark to Perceval three weeks before, that they were quite at liberty to take new steps without “any hazard of seeing them too well received,” pointed in the same direction. Yet motives were enigmas too obscure for search, and the motives of Canning in this instance were more perplexing than usual. If he was serious in hoping an agreement, how could he insist on requiring official recognition of the right of Great Britain to enforce the municipal laws of the United States when he afterward admitted that such a claim “could not well find its way into a stipulation; that he had nevertheless believed it proper to propose the condition to the United States; that he should have been satisfied with the rejection of it; and that the consequence would have been that they should have intercepted the commerce to which it referred, if any such commerce should be attempted”?[50] In the instructions to Erskine he imposed the condition as essential to the agreement,—the same condition which he thought “could not well find its way into a stipulation,” and which “he should have been satisfied” to see rejected.
For two years Canning had lost no opportunity of charging the American government with subservience to Napoleon; even in these instructions he alleged Jefferson’s “manifest partiality” to France as a reason why England could entertain no propositions coming from him. He had in his hands Madison’s emphatic threats of war; how then could he conceive of obtaining from Madison an express recognition of the British Rule of 1756, which Madison had most deeply pledged himself to resist?
On the other hand, Canning showed forbearance and a wish for peace, by leaving Erskine minister at Washington as well as by passing unnoticed Madison’s threats of war; and he betrayed a singular incapacity to understand the bearing of his own demands when he directed Erskine to communicate his instructions in extenso to the American government. Had he intelligently acted in bad faith, he would not have given the President, whose attachment to France he suspected, the advantage of seeing these instructions, which required that America should become a subject State of England.
Perhaps a partial clew to these seeming contradictions might be found in the peculiar traits of Canning’s character. He belonged to a class of men denied the faculty of realizing the sensibilities of others. At the moment when he took this tone of authority toward America, he gave mortal offence to his own colleague Lord Castlereagh, by assuming a like attitude toward him. He could not understand, and he could never train himself to regard, the rule that such an attitude between States as between gentlemen was not admitted among equals.
Whatever was the reason of Canning’s conduct, its effect was that of creating the impression of bad faith by offering terms intended to be refused. The effect of bad faith was the more certain because the instructions closed by giving Erskine some latitude, not as to the conditions which were to be distinctly and officially recognized, but as to the form in which the recognition might be required:—
“Upon the receipt here of an official note containing an engagement for the adoption of the three conditions above specified, his Majesty will be prepared on the faith of such engagement,—either immediately, if the repeal shall have been immediate in America or on any day specified by the American government for that repeal,—reciprocally to recall the Orders in Council.”
The form of the required engagement was left to Erskine’s discretion; and in case Erskine failed, Canning would be still at liberty to claim, as he afterward did, that his conditions were not so rigorously meant as Erskine should have supposed them to be.
Meanwhile the Government of England was falling to pieces. Day by day the situation became more alarming. For months after these despatches were sent, the Commons passed their time in taking testimony and listening to speeches intended to prove or disprove that the Duke of York, commander-in-chief of the army, was in the habit of selling officers’ commissions through the agency of his mistress, a certain Mrs. Clarke; and although the Duke protested his innocence, the scandal drove him from his office. The old King, blind and infirm, was quite unfit to bear the shame of his son’s disgrace; while the Prince of Wales stood no better than the Duke of York either in his father’s esteem or in public opinion. The Ministry was rent by faction; Perceval, Castlereagh, and Canning were at cross purposes, while the Whigs were so weak that they rather feared than hoped their rivals’ fall. Whatever might be the factiousness of Congress or the weakness of government at Washington, the confusion in Parliament was worse, and threatened worse dangers.
“All power and influence of Perceval in the House is quite gone by,” wrote a Whig member, February 16.[51] “He speaks without authority and without attention paid to him; and Canning has made two or three such rash declarations that he is little attended to. You may judge the situation of the House, when I tell you we were last night nearly three quarters of an hour debating about the evidence of a drunken footman by Perceval suggesting modes of ascertaining how to convict him of his drunkenness,—Charles Long [one of the Administration], near whom I was sitting telling me at the time what a lamentable proof it was of the want of some man of sense and judgment to lead the House. There is no government in the House of Commons,—you may be assured the thing does not exist; and whether they can ever recover their tone of power remains to be proved. At present Mr. Croker, Mr. D. Brown, and Mr. Beresford are the leaders.... The Cintra Convention, or the general campaign, or the American question, are minor considerations, and indeed do not enter into the consideration of any one.”
The House of Lords maintained more appearance of dignity; and there, February 17, four-and-twenty hours after Colonel Fremantle wrote this letter, Lord Grenville began a debate on American affairs. As a test of Tory sincerity in view of what Erskine was soon to do at Washington, the debate—as well as all else that was said of American affairs during the session—deserved more than ordinary notice, if only in justice to the British ministry, whose language was to receive a commentary they did not expect.[52]
The most significant speech came from Lord Sidmouth. The conservatism of this peer stood above reproach, and compared closely with that of Spencer Perceval. Rather than abandon the “established principle” of the Rule of 1756, he far preferred an American war. He proved his stubborn Tory consistency too clearly, both before and after 1809, to warrant a suspicion of leanings toward liberal or American sympathies; but his speech of February 17 supporting Grenville, and charging ministers with bad faith, was long and earnest. He called attention to the scandal that while the Government professed in the speech from the Throne a persuasion “that in the result the enemy will be convinced of the impolicy of persevering in a system which retorts upon himself, in so much greater proportion, those evils which he endeavors to inflict,” yet instead of retorting those evils, Perceval licensed the export and import both with France and Holland of the very articles which those countries wished to sell and buy, while Canning at the same moment rejected the American offers of trade because he thought it “important in the highest degree that the disappointment of the hopes of the enemy should not have been purchased by any concession.”
Ministers might disregard Grenville’s furious denunciation of the orders as an act of the most egregious folly and the most unexampled ignorance that ever disgraced the councils of a State; they might even close their ears to Sidmouth’s charge that the folly and ignorance of the orders were surpassed by their dishonesty,—but not even Spencer Perceval could deny or forget that while a year before, Feb. 15, 1808, forty-eight peers voted against him, on Feb. 17, 1809, seventy lords, in person or by proxy, supported Grenville. While the opposition gained twenty-two votes, the government gained only nine.
The impression of weakness in the ministry was increased by the energy with which the authors of the orders stood at bay in their defence. When Whitbread in the House of Commons renewed the attack, and the House, March 6, entered on the debate, James Stephen came forward as the champion of his own cause. Stephen’s speech,[53] published afterward as a pamphlet, was intended to be an official as well as a final answer to attacks against the orders, and was conclusive in regard to the scope and motives of Perceval’s scheme. Neither Canning nor Liverpool spoke with personal knowledge to be compared with that of Stephen. Canning in particular had nothing to do with the orders except as a subject of diplomatic evasion. Stephen, Perceval, and George Rose were the parents of commercial restriction, and knew best their own objects. With frankness creditable to him, but contrasting with the double-toned language of Perceval and Canning, Stephen always placed in the foreground the commercial objects he wanted and expected to attain. His speech of March 6, 1809, once more asserted, in language as positive as possible, that the orders had no other purpose than to stop the American trade with France because it threatened to supplant British trade. The doctrine of retaliation, or the object of retorting evils on France, had nothing to do with Stephen’s scheme. His words were clear, for like a true enthusiast he was wholly intent on the idea in which he thought safety depended.
Canning also planted himself on advanced ground. The question, he said, was between England and France; not between England and America. On the principles of international law he had no defence to offer for the Orders in Council as between England and America. “He was willing to admit that it was not upon the poor pretence of the existing law of nations, but upon the extension of that law (an extension just and necessary), that his Majesty’s ministers were to rely, in the present instance, for justification.” This extension rested on the excuse that France had first discarded the law of nations; and America, in attempting to give to Great Britain the priority in wrong, had incurred this censure,—“that she had brought a false charge, and persisted in it.” In his opinion, the American offer to withdraw the embargo in favor of England and to enforce it against France, “was illusory; he might add, in the language of Mr. Madison, ‘it was insulting.’” Those who accused ministers of a disinclination to adopt pacific measures respecting America had lost sight of the facts. “We had rather gone too far than done too little. We twice offered to negotiate; yet the Non-importation Act was not revoked.”
If this was Canning’s true state of mind, his instructions to Erskine less than a month before, offering to abandon the Orders in Council, seemed to admit no defence. Still less could be explained how President Madison, after reading these speeches, should have expected from Canning the approval of any possible arrangement. Yet the irritation of Canning’s tone showed him to be ill at ease,—he felt the ground slipping under his feet. The public had become weary of him and his colleagues. The commercial system they had invented seemed to create the evils it was made to counteract. The press began to complain. As early as January 13 the “Times” showed signs of deserting the orders, which it declared to be no “acts of retaliation,” but “measures of counteraction,” complicated by transit duties doubtful either in expediency or justice. “If America will withdraw her Embargo and Non-importation Acts as far as they relate to England, provided we rescind the Orders in Council, we cannot consider this as a disgraceful concession on our part.” After the debate of March 6, the “Times” renewed its complaints. Every day increased the difficulties of ministers, until mere change became relief.
At length, April 26, the reality of the weakness of Perceval and Canning became clear. On that day a new Order in Council[54] appeared, which roused great interest because it seemed to abandon the whole ground taken in the Orders of November, 1807, and to return within the admitted principles of international law. The machinery of the old orders was apparently discarded; the machinery of blockade was restored in its place. The Order of April 26, 1809, declared that the old orders were revoked and annulled except so far as their objects were to be attained by a general blockade of all ports and places under the government of France. The blockade thus declared was to extend northward as far as Ems, and was to include on the south the ports of northern Italy. Of course the new blockade was not even claimed to be effective. No squadrons were to enforce its provisions by their actual presence before the blockaded ports. In that respect the Order of April 26, 1809, was as illegal as that of Nov. 11, 1807; but the new arrangement opened to neutral commerce all ports not actually ports of France, even though the British flag should be excluded from them,—retaliating upon France only the injury which the French decrees attempted to inflict on England.
Pinkney was greatly pleased, and wrote to Madison in excellent spirits[55] that the change gave all the immediate benefits which could have arisen from the arrangement proposed by him in the previous August, except the right to demand from France the recall of her edicts. “Our triumph is already considered as a signal one by everybody. The pretexts with which ministers would conceal their motives for a relinquishment of all which they prized in their system are seen through, and it is universally viewed as a concession to America. Our honor is now safe; and by management we may probably gain everything we have in view.” Canning said to Pinkney: “If these alterations did not do all that was expected, they at least narrowed extremely the field of discussion, and gave great facilities and encouragement to reviving cordiality.”[56] Government took pains to impress the idea that it had done much, and wished to do more for conciliation; yet the doubt remained whether Government was acting in good faith. Pinkney overestimated its concessions. If the British navy was to blockade Holland, France, and northern Italy only in order that British commerce might be forced, through the blockade and license system, into the place of neutral commerce, the new system was only the old one in disguise. Under a blockade, in good faith, licenses seemed to have no place. In that case, the Order in Council of April 26 might lead to a real settlement; but how was it possible that Perceval, George Rose, and James Stephen should have given up what they believed to be the only hope for England’s safety?
If one frank and straightforward man could be found among the ministerial ranks, James Stephen had a right to that distinction, and to his language one might hope to look with confidence for the truth; yet Stephen seemed for once not to understand himself. In publishing his speech of March 6, he added an appendix on the new order, and closed his remarks by a prayer that seemed meant to open the way for the full admission of American offers:—
“It is not strange that a measure so indulgent [as the new Order] should be generally approved by the American merchants and agents resident in England. The most eminent of the gentlemen of that description who opposed the Orders of November have openly professed their satisfaction at this important change. May the same sentiment prevail on notice of it beyond the Atlantic! Or, what would be still better, may an amicable arrangement there have already terminated all the differences between us and our American brethren on terms that will involve a complete revocation of our retaliatory orders, and impose on America herself, by her own consent, the duty of vindicating effectually the rights of neutrality against the aggressions of France!”