CHAPTER XVIII.
April 1, 1811, Monroe took charge of the State Department. The first person to claim his attention was the French Emperor, and Monroe had reasons for knowing that diplomatists of reputed sagacity found use for uninterrupted attention when they undertook to deal with Napoleon.
Monroe stood in a situation of extreme difficulty, hampered not only by the pledges of his own government, but still more by the difficulty of dealing at all with the government of France. When Armstrong quitted Paris in September, 1810, being obliged to fix upon some American competent to take charge of the legation at Paris, he chose Jonathan Russell. The selection was the best he could make. Jonathan Russell possessed advantages over ordinary ministers coming directly from America. A native of Rhode Island, educated at Brown University, after leaving college he followed the business of a merchant, and in November, 1809, sailed from Boston in a ship of his own, which arrived at Tönning in Denmark only to be at once sequestered under Napoleon’s Decrees. He passed several months in efforts to recover the property, and acquired experience in the process. About forty years old, and more or less acquainted with the people, politics, and languages of Europe, he was better fitted than any secretary of legation then abroad for the burden that Armstrong had found intolerable; yet the oldest and ablest diplomatist America ever sent to Europe might have despaired of effecting any good result with such means as were at the disposal of this temporary agent, who had not even the support of a direct commission from the President.
Russell felt the embarrassment of the position he was called to fill. Armstrong departed September 12, bearing Cadore’s promise that the decrees should cease to operate November 1, and saying as little as possible of a condition precedent. The 1st of November came, and Russell asked the Duc de Cadore whether the revocation had taken place; but a month passed without his receiving an answer. December 4, 1810, Russell wrote to the Secretary of State,[294]—
“No one here except the Emperor knows if the Berlin and Milan Decrees be absolutely revoked or not; and no one dares inquire of him concerning them. The general opinion of those with whom I have conversed on the subject is that they are revoked. There are indeed among those who entertain this opinion several counsellors of State; but this is of little importance, as the construction which the Emperor may choose to adopt will alone prevail.”
At about the same time Russell wrote to Pinkney at London a letter[295] expressing the opinion that, as the decrees had not been executed for one entire month against any vessel arriving in France, this fact created a presumption that the decrees were repealed. He could not be blamed for an opinion so cautious, yet he was mistaken in committing himself even to that extent, for he learned a few days afterward that two American vessels had been seized at Bordeaux, and he found himself obliged to write the Duc de Cadore a strong remonstrance on the ground that as this was the first case that had occurred since November 1 to which the decrees could have applied, the seizures created a presumption that the decrees were not repealed.[296] Russell’s instructions from America, including the President’s proclamation of November 2, arrived three days later, December 13, requiring him to assume the revocation of the decrees; but only two days after receiving them, he read in the “Moniteur” of December 15 Cadore’s official report to the Emperor declaring that the decrees would never be revoked as long as England maintained her blockades; and again, December 17, he found in the same newspaper the Count de Semonville’s official address before the Senate, declaring that the Decrees of Berlin and Milan should be the “palladium of the seas.”
Yet Russell’s position was not quite so desperate as it seemed. Certainly the decrees were not revoked; but he had a fair hope of obtaining some formal act warranting him in claiming their revocation. Although Napoleon’s motives often seemed mysterious except to men familiar with his mind, yet one may venture to guess, since guess one must, that he had looked for little success from the manœuvre of announcing the revocation of his decrees as concerned the United States. Perhaps he dictated Cadore’s letter of August 5 rather in order to prevent America from declaring war against himself than in the faith that a trick, that to his eye would have been transparent, could effect what all his efforts for ten years past had failed to bring about,—a war between the United States and Great Britain. The Emperor showed certainly almost as lively surprise as pleasure, when December 12 he received the President’s proclamation of November 2, reviving the non-intercourse against England. His pleasure was the greater when he learned that President Madison had adopted his suggestion not only in this instance, but also in requiring of England the withdrawal of Fox’s blockade of 1806 as a sine qua non of any future renewal of commerce. Delighted with his success, not only did the Emperor take no offence at the President’s almost simultaneous proclamation for the seizure of West Florida, but rather his first impulse was to lose not a moment in fixing Madison in his new attitude. He wrote a hurried letter[297] on the instant to Cadore, ordering him if possible to send fresh instructions to Serurier, who was already on his way to succeed Turreau as French minister at Washington:—
“Send me the draft of a despatch for M. Serurier, if he is still at Bayonne.... You will show in this letter the satisfaction I have felt in reading the last letters from America. You will give the assurance that if the American government is decided to maintain the independence of its flag, it will find every kind of aid and privileges in this country. Your letter will of course be in cipher. In it you will make known that I am in no way opposed to the Floridas as becoming an American possession; that I desire, in general, whatever can favor the independence of Spanish America. You will make the same communication to the American chargé d’affaires, who will write in cipher to his Government that I am favorable to the cause of American independence; and that as we do not found our commerce on exclusive pretensions, I shall see with pleasure the independence of a great nation, provided it be not under the influence of England.”
This hasty note still throws out flashes of the fire that consumed the world. Silent as to the single question that America wanted him to answer, the Emperor not only resumed his old habit of dangling the Floridas before the President’s eyes, but as though he were glad to escape from every Spanish tie, he pressed on Madison the whole of Spanish America. Once more one is reduced to guess at the motive of this astonishing change. No one knew better than Napoleon that the independence of Spanish America could benefit England alone; that England had fought, intrigued, and traded for centuries to bring this result about, and that the United States were altogether unable to contest English influence at any point in Central and South America. He knew, too, that the permanent interests of France could only be injured by betraying again the Spanish empire, and that nothing could exceed the extravagance of intriguing for the revolt of Mexico and Peru while his armies were exhausting themselves in the effort to make his own brother King of Spain. Such sudden inconsistencies were no new thing in Napoleon’s career. The story of the Floridas repeated the story of Louisiana. As in 1803 Napoleon, disgusted with his failure at St. Domingo, threw Louisiana to Jefferson, so in 1810, disgusted with his failure at Madrid, he threw Spanish America in a mass to Madison. What was more serious still, as in 1803 Germany could foresee that she must pay on the Rhine for the losses of France at St. Domingo and New Orleans, so in 1810 the Czar Alexander already could divine that the compensation which Napoleon would require for Mexico and Peru would lie somewhere in the neighborhood of Poland. Thus much at least had been gained for the United States and England. Napoleon took no more interest in the roads to Lisbon and Cadiz, and studied only those that led to Wilna, Moscow, and St. Petersburg.
Read in this sense, Napoleon’s instructions to Cadore and Serurier told most interesting news; but on the point likely to prove a matter of life and death to Madison, the Emperor spoke so evasively as to show that he meant to yield nothing he could retain. He ordered Cadore to talk with Jonathan Russell about commercial matters:—
“Have a conference with this chargé d’affaires in order to understand thoroughly what the American government wants. You will tell him that I have subjected ships coming from America to certain formalities; that these formalities consist of a letter in cipher, joined with licenses, which prove that the ship comes from America and has been loaded there, but that I cannot admit American ships coming from London, since this would upset my system; that there is no way of knowing the fact [of their American character], and that there are shipowners who for mercantile objects foil the measures of the American government; in short, that I have made a step; that I will wait till February 2 to see what America will do, and that in the mean time I will conduct myself according to circumstances, but so as to do no harm to ships really coming from America; that the question is difficult, but that he should give the positive assurance to his Government of my wish to favor it in everything; that he knows, moreover, that several ships coming from America since the last measures were known have obtained permission to discharge their cargoes in France; finally, that we cannot consider as American the ships convoyed to the Baltic, which have double papers, etc. It would be well if you could engage this chargé to answer you by a note, and to agree that he disowns the American ships which navigate the Baltic. This would be sent to Russia, and would be useful. In general, employ all possible means of convincing this chargé d’affaires, who I suppose speaks French, of the particularly favorable disposition I feel toward the Americans; that the real embarrassment is to recognize true Americans from those who serve the English; and that I consider the step taken by the American government as a first step taken toward a good result.”
When Napoleon used many words and became apologetic, he was least interesting, because his motives became most evident. In regard to America, he wished to elude an inconvenient inquiry whether the Berlin and Milan Decrees were or were not revoked. Consequently he did not mention those decrees, although credulity itself could not have reconciled his pledge to wait until February 2, with his official assertion of August 5 that the decrees would be withdrawn on November 1. Such a course was fatal to Madison, for it forced him to appear as accepting the Berlin and Milan Decrees after so long protesting against them. So justly anxious was the President to protect himself from this risk, that in sending to Russell the Non-intercourse Proclamation of November 2 he warned the chargé against the doctrine of a condition precedent involved in Cadore’s “bien entendu.” The Emperor was to understand that the United States acted on the ground that “bien entendu” did not mean “condition precedent.”[298] “It is to be remarked, moreover, that in issuing the Proclamation, it has been presumed that the requisition ... on the subject of the sequestered property will have been satisfied.”
December 13, at the moment when Napoleon was writing his instructions to Cadore, Jonathan Russell was reading the instructions of President Madison. No diplomatist could have found common ground on which to reconcile the two documents. Madison’s knowledge of the Napoleonic idiom was certainly incomplete. Whatever “bien entendu” meant in the dictionaries, it meant in Napoleon’s mouth the words “on condition,”—and something more. In further assuming that the sequestered property had been restored, President Madison might with equal propriety have assumed that it had never been seized. Russell did what he could to satisfy Madison’s wishes, but he could not hope to succeed.
Bound by these instructions to communicate the President’s proclamation in language far from according with Napoleon’s ideas, Russell wrote to Cadore, December 17, a note,[299], in which he not only repeated the President’s assumptions in regard to the revocation of the decrees, but also ventured beyond the scope of his instructions: he demanded an explanation of the language used by Cadore himself in his report to the Emperor, and by Semonville in the Senate. As though such a demand under such circumstances were not indiscreet enough, Russell strengthened the formal and perfunctory protests of the President by adding an assurance of his own that the United States, after cutting off their own intercourse with England, would not consent to “any commercial intercourse whatever, under licenses or otherwise, between France and her enemy.”
Russell’s note of December 17 was never answered by the French government, and, as was equally natural, it was never published by the President or made known to Congress. Fortunately for Russell, the Emperor was in good humor, and Cadore was in haste to convey his master’s wishes to the American chargé d’affaires. December 22 Russell was summoned to the minister, and a very interesting interview took place. Cadore gently complained of the tone in which Russell’s note had been written, but put into his hands, as its result and answer, the two letters written by the ministers of Justice and Finance,—which allowed American vessels to enter French ports, subject only to provisional sequestration, until February 2, at which time all vessels sequestered since November 1 would be restored. “When I had read these letters,” reported Russell,[300] “I returned them to the Duke of Cadore, and expressed to him my regret that the general release of American vessels detained under the Berlin and Milan Decrees should be deferred until the 2d of February, as this delay might throw some doubt on the revocation of those decrees.” Cadore replied that the time thus taken was intended to afford an opportunity for forming some general rule by which the character of the property could be decided. Russell then complained that by assigning the second day of February,—the very day on which the non-intercourse with England would be revived,—this event was made to appear as a condition precedent to the abrogation of the French edicts; and thereby the order in which the measures of the two governments ought to stand was reversed. In reply Cadore repeated the general assurances of the friendly disposition of the Emperor, and that he was determined to favor the trade of the United States so far as it did not cover or promote the commerce of England. He said the Berlin and Milan Decrees, “inasmuch as they related to the United States,” were at an end; that the Emperor was pleased with what the United States had already done, but that he could not “throw himself into their arms” until they had accomplished their undertaking.
Nothing could be more gentle than this manner of saying that the revocation of November 1 was and was not founded on a condition precedent; that the decrees themselves were and were not revoked; but when Russell still pressed for a categorical answer, Cadore declared at last, “with some vivacity, that the Emperor was determined to persevere in his system against England; that he had overturned the world in adopting this system, and that he would overturn it again to give it effect.” On the third point Cadore was equally unyielding. Not a word could Russell wring from him in regard to the confiscated property of American merchants. “His omission to notice the last is more to be lamented, as I have reason to believe that this conversation was meant to form the only answer I am to receive to the communications which I have addressed to him.”
The conduct of Cadore warranted Russell’s conclusion that “upon the whole this interview was not calculated to increase my confidence in the revocation of the decrees.” Although President Madison reached a different conclusion, and on the strength of this conference caused Congress to adopt the Non-Intercourse Act of March 2, Russell’s opinion could not be disputed. At the end of another week Cadore sent word that one of the American vessels, the “Grace Ann Greene,” arrived at Marseilles since November 1, had been released; and Russell wrote to Pinkney that this release might be considered conclusive evidence of the revocation.[301] A month afterward he wrote to the Secretary of State on the same subject in a different tone,[302] saying that the United States had not yet much cause to be satisfied; that no vessel arrived since November 1 had been permitted to discharge her cargo, and that tedious delays were constantly interposed. As for the property confiscated before November 1, Russell avowed himself afraid to make the reclamation ordered by the President: “I ascertained indirectly that a convention to this effect would not be entered into at this moment; and I thought it indiscreet to expose the United States, with all the right on their side, to a refusal.” No action of the United States, he feared, could redeem the unfortunate property.[303]
Failure on these points was accompanied by a promise of success on others. The President had remonstrated against the Emperor’s scheme of issuing licenses through the French consuls to vessels in ports of the United States; and Russell wrote to Cadore, Jan. 12, 1811, that such consular superintendence was inadmissible, and would not be permitted.[304] January 18 Cadore returned an answer, evidently taken from the Emperor’s lips:[305]—
“I have read with much attention your note of January 12, relative to the licenses intended to favor the commerce of the Americans in France. This system had been conceived before the revocation of the Decrees of Berlin and Milan had been resolved on. Now circumstances are changed by the resolution taken by the United States to cause their flag and their independence to be respected. That which has been done before this last epoch can no longer serve as a rule under actual circumstances.”
Although this letter said that the Berlin and Milan Decrees were repealed,—not on Nov. 1, 1810, but at some indeterminate time afterward, in consequence of the President’s proclamation of November 2,—yet it officially declared that whatever the date might be, on January 18, when Cadore wrote, the revocation was complete. Russell sent the letter to the President, and the President sent it nearly ten months afterward to Congress as proof that the decrees were revoked. He could not send, for he could not know, another letter written by Cadore to Serurier three weeks later, which instructed him to the contrary:[306]—
“I send you the copy of a letter addressed by me to Mr. Russell, January 18, on the permits that had been at first delivered to American ships. I cannot assure you that the permits are no longer to be issued, although this letter gives it to be understood in an explicit manner. Continue to conduct yourself with the reserve heretofore recommended to you, and compromise yourself by no step and by no official promise. Circumstances are such that no engagement can be taken in advance. It is at the date of February 2 that the United States were to execute their act of non-intercourse against England; but before being officially informed in France of what they have done at that time, we cannot take here measures so decisive in favor of the Americans as after news to February 2 shall have arrived from America. This motive will serve to explain to you whatever uncertainty may appear in the conduct of France toward the United States.”
From these official instructions the facts were easy to understand. The decrees had not been revoked on Aug. 5 or Nov. 1, 1810; they were not revoked Jan. 18, 1811; they were not to be revoked on February 2; but the Emperor would decide in the spring, when news should arrive from America, whether he would make permanent exceptions in favor of American commerce. In principle, the decrees were not to be revoked at all.
For four years President Madison had strenuously protested that France and England must withdraw their decrees as a condition precedent to friendly relations with America. For four years Napoleon had insisted that America should submit to his decrees as a condition precedent to friendly relations with France. February 2, 1811, he carried his point. The decisive day passed without action on his part. Six weeks followed, but March 15 Russell still wrote to the Secretary of State as doubtfully as he wrote in the previous December:[307] “The temper here varies in relation to us with every rumor of the proceedings of our government. One day we are told that the Emperor has learned that the Non-intercourse Law will be severely executed,—that he is in good humor, and that everything will go well; the next day it is stated that he has heard something which has displeased him, and that the American property lately arrived in this country is in the utmost jeopardy. Every general plan here is evidently suspended until the course we may elect to pursue be definite and certain.”
Russell made no further attempt to maintain the fact of revocation. Indeed, if the decrees were revoked, American rights were more lawlessly violated than before. As ship after ship arrived from the United States, he saw each taken, under one pretext or another, into the Emperor’s keeping:—
“To countenance delay, no doubt, a new order was issued to the custom-houses on the 18th ult., that no vessels not having licenses, coming from foreign countries, be admitted without the special authority of the Emperor. This indeed makes the detention indefinite, as when once a case is before the Emperor it can no longer be inquired after, much less pressed, and it is impossible to say when it may attract the Imperial attention. It is my belief that our property will be kept within the control of this government until it be officially known here that the Non-intercourse Act against England went into operation with undiminished rigor on the 2d of February.”
Under such circumstances, the idea that the United States were bound by a contract with France—the principle on which Congress legislated in the month of February—had no meaning to Jonathan Russell at Paris, where as late as April 1 not a step had yet been taken toward making the contract complete. “I trust,” wrote Russell, March 15, “that I shall not be understood in anything which I have written in this letter to urge any obligation on the United States to execute at all the Non-intercourse Law; this obligation is certainly weakened, if not destroyed, by the conduct of the Government here.”
Russell never misunderstood the situation or misled his Government. Although Napoleon’s habit of deception was the theme of every historian and moralist, the more remarkable trait was his frequent effort to avoid or postpone an evidently necessary falsehood, and, above all, his incapacity to adhere to any consistent untruth. Napoleon was easily understood by men of his own stamp; but he was not wholly misunderstood by men like Armstrong and Russell. He did not choose to revoke the decrees, and he made no secret of his reasons even to the American government.
In the spring of 1811 the Emperor was surrounded by difficulties caused by his interference with trade. The financial storm which overspread England in 1810 extended to France in the following winter, and not only swept away credit and capital throughout the empire, but also embarrassed Napoleon’s finances and roused fresh resistance to his experiments on commerce. The resistance irritated him, and he showed his anger repeatedly in public. At the Tuileries, March 17, he addressed some deputies of the Hanseatic League in a tone which still betrayed an effort at self-control:[308]—
“The Decrees of Berlin and Milan are the fundamental laws of my empire. They cease to have effect only for nations that defend their sovereignty and maintain the religion of their flag. England is in a state of blockade for nations that submit to the decrees of 1806, because the flags so subjected to English laws are denationalized; they are English. Nations on the contrary that are sensible of their dignity, and that find resources enough in their courage and strength for disregarding the blockades by notice, commonly called paper blockades, and enter the ports of my empire, other than those really blockaded,—following the recognized usage and the stipulations of the Treaty of Utrecht,—may communicate with England; for them England is not blockaded. The Decrees of Berlin and Milan, founded on the nature of things, will form the constant public law of my empire during the whole time that England shall maintain her Orders in Council of 1806 and 1807, and shall violate the stipulations of the Treaty of Utrecht in that matter.”
The sudden appearance of the Treaty of Utrecht had an effect of comedy; but the speech itself merely reasserted the rules of 1806 and 1807, which time had not made more acceptable to neutrals. Again and again, by every means in his power and with every accent of truth, Napoleon asserted that his decrees were not and never should be revoked, nor should they be even suspended except for the nations that conformed to them. Though America had rejected this law in 1807, she might still if she chose accept it in 1811; but certainly she could not charge Napoleon with deception or concealment of his meaning. A week after the address to the Hanseatic deputies, on Sunday, March 24, he made another and a more emphatic speech. The principal bankers and merchants of Paris came to the Tuileries to offer their congratulations on the birth of a son. Napoleon harangued them for more than half an hour in the tone he sometimes affected, of a subaltern of dragoons,—rude, broken, and almost incoherent, but nervous and terrifying:—
“When I issued my Decrees of Berlin and Milan, England laughed; you made fun of me; yet I know my business. I had maturely weighed my situation with England; but people pretended that I did not know what I was about,—that I was ill-advised. Yet see where England stands to-day!... Within ten years I shall subject England. I want only a maritime force. Is not the French empire brilliant enough for me? I have taken Holland, Hamburg, etc., only to make my flag respected. I consider the flag of a nation as a part of herself; she must be able to carry it everywhere, or she is not free. That nation which does not make her flag respected is not a nation in my eyes. The Americans—we are going to see what they will do. No Power in Europe shall trade with England. Six months sooner or later I shall catch up with it (je l’attendrai),—my sword is long enough for that. I made peace at Tilsit only because Russia undertook to make war on England. I was then victorious. I might have gone to Wilna; nothing could stop me but this engagement of Russia.... At present I am only moderately desirous of peace with England. I have the means of making a navy; I have all the products of the Rhine; I have timber, dock-yards, etc.; I have already said that I have sailors. The English stop everything on the ocean; I will stop everything I find of theirs on the Continent. Their Miladies, their Milords,—we shall be quit! (Leurs Miladies, leurs Milords—nous serons à deux de jeu!)”
This hurried talk, which was rather a conversation than a speech, lasted until the Emperor’s voice began to fail him. He flung defiance in the face of every nation in the Christian world, and announced in no veiled terms the coming fate of Russia. His loquacity astounded his hearers, and within a few days several reports of what he said, differing in details, but agreeing in the main, were handed privately about Paris, and were on their way to St. Petersburg, London, and New York[309]. One account varied in regard to the words used about America:—
“The Decrees of Berlin and Milan are the fundamental laws of my empire,” began the second report. “As for neutral navigation, I regard the flag as an extension of territory; the Power which lets it be violated cannot be considered neutral. The lot of American commerce will be soon decided. I will favor it if the United States conform to those decrees; in the contrary case, their ships will be excluded from the ports of my empire.”
Russell sent to Monroe these private accounts, adding a few details to show more exactly the Emperor’s meaning. Writing April 4, he said that no American vessel had been allowed an entry since February 4 unless carrying a license; that a secret order had then been given to the custom-house to make no reports on American cases; that the Council of Prizes had suspended its decisions; and that, notwithstanding Cadore’s promise, licenses were still issued. “If the license system,” concluded Russell, “were concerned, as the Duke of Cadore suggests, to favor American commerce during the existence only of the Berlin and Milan Decrees, it is probably necessary to infer from the excuse of that system the continuance of those decrees.”
Left without powers or instructions, Russell could thenceforward do nothing. Remonstrance was worse than useless. “A representation of this kind,” he wrote, “however mildly it might portray the unfriendly and faithless conduct of this Government, might have hastened a crisis which it does not become me to urge.”
At length, April 25, despatches arrived from America enclosing the Non-intercourse Act of March 2 and the secret Act for taking possession of Florida. The President’s accompanying instructions[310] ordered Russell to explain that the different dates fixed by the Proclamation and by the Act for enforcing the non-intercourse against England were owing to the different senses in which Cadore’s letter had been construed in France and America,—the President having assumed that the decrees would have been extinct Nov. 1, 1810, while the French government, “as appears from its official acts, admits only a suspension with a view to a subsequent cessation.” These instructions, as well as Russell’s despatches for the most part, were never communicated to Congress.
April 17, a week before these documents arrived, Napoleon made a sudden change in his Cabinet, by dismissing Cadore and appointing Hugues Maret, Duc de Bassano, as his Minister of Foreign Affairs. No one knew the cause of Cadore’s fall. He was mild, modest, and not given to display. He “lacked conversation,” Napoleon complained. Probably his true offence consisted in leaning toward Russia and in dislike for the commercial system, while Maret owed promotion to opposite tendencies. Maret’s abilities were undoubted; his political morality was no worse than that of his master, and perhaps no better than that of Cadore or of Talleyrand whom he hated.[311] He could hardly be more obedient than Cadore; and as far us America was concerned, he could do no more mischief.
When Russell repaired to the Foreign Office, April 28, he was received by the new minister, who availed himself of his inexperience to ask many questions and to answer none. Russell had a long interview with no results; but this delay mattered little, for the Emperor needed no information. No sooner had he received the Non-intercourse Act of March 2 than he ordered his ministers to make a report on the situation of American commerce.[312] The order was due not so much to a wish of hearing what his ministers had to say as of telling them what they were to report:—
“The United States have not declared war on England, but they have recognized the Decrees of Berlin and Milan, since they have authorized their citizens to trade with France, and have forbidden them every relation with England. In strict public right, the Emperor ought to exact that the United States should declare war against England; but after all it is in some sort to make war when they consent that the Decree of Berlin should be applied to ships which shall have communicated with England. On this hypothesis, one would say: ‘The Decrees of Berlin and Milan are withdrawn as regards the United States; but as every ship which has touched in England, or is bound thither, is a vagrant that the laws punish and confiscate, it may be confiscated in France.’ If this reasoning could be established, nothing would remain but to take precautions for admitting none but American products on American ships.”
This view of the contract to which American faith was bound, though quite the opposite of Madison’s, was liberal compared with its alternative:—
“Finally, if it should be impossible to trace out a good theory in this system, the best would be to gain time, leaving the principles of the matter a little obscure until we see the United States take sides; for it appears that that Government cannot remain long in its actual situation toward England, with whom it has also political discussions concerning the affairs of Spanish America.”
The Emperor’s will was law. The Council set itself accordingly to the task of “leaving the principles of the matter a little obscure” until the United States should declare war against England; while the Emperor, not without reason, assumed that America had recognized the legality of his decrees.