“I infer ... that the blockade ... is not itself in force, and that the restrictions which it established rest altogether, so far as such restrictions exist at this time, upon an Order or Orders in Council issued since the first day of January, 1807.”
To this easy question, which seemed hardly worth answering in the negative, Wellesley replied, March 26,[229]
“The blockade notified by Great Britain in May, 1806, has never been formally withdrawn. It cannot, therefore, be accurately stated that the restrictions which it established rest altogether on the Order of Council of Jan. 7, 1807; they are comprehended under the more extensive restrictions of that Order.”
This explanation, however satisfactory it might be to the admiralty lawyer who may have framed it, conveyed no clear idea to the diplomatic mind. The question whether the blockade of 1806 was or was not still in force remained obscure. Pinkney thought it not in force, and wrote to Armstrong,[230]—
“Certainly the inference is that the blockade of 1806 is virtually at an end, being merged and comprehended in an Order in Council issued after the date of the Edict of Berlin. I am, however, about to try to obtain a formal revocation of that blockade, and of that of Venice [July 27, 1806], or at least a precise declaration that they are not in force.”
His hopes were not strong, but he returned patiently to his task, and April 30 wrote a third letter to Lord Wellesley,[231] in which he recited Napoleon’s promise in full, and begged Wellesley to say “whether there exists any objection on the part of his Majesty’s government to a revocation, or to a declaration that they are no longer in force, of the blockades in question, especially that of May, 1806.”
Already Pinkney had waited nearly three months for a plain answer to a question which ought certainly to have received a satisfactory reply within a week. He was destined to wait longer; indeed, the United States waited two years for their answer before they declared war. The reason for this incomprehensible behavior, at a moment when America was thought to be friendly, cannot be fully explained; but evidence published in his brother’s papers seems to show that Marquess Wellesley favored giving up not only Fox’s blockade, but also the principle of commercial restrictions represented both in the Orders of November, 1807, and in the blockade of April, 1809. “He only agreed with his colleagues in the legality and propriety of the orders when first enacted. He contended that they had ceased to be applicable to the state of affairs; that they had become inexpedient with regard to England, and would certainly produce a war with America.”[232] That he insisted on this opinion in the Cabinet, or forced an issue with his colleagues on the point, is not to be supposed; but without doubt the treatment his opinions and authority received in the Cabinet was the cause of his strange conduct toward the American minister.
Pinkney’s last letter about Fox’s blockade was dated April 30. As early as April 25 every well-informed man in London knew that Wellesley was on bad terms with his colleagues. The Marquess of Buckingham’s correspondent had the news from Wellesley’s own mouth:[233]—
“Lord Wellesley complains that he has no weight whatever in Council; that there is nothing doing there which marks energy or activity; that the affairs of the country are quite at a standstill, and are likely to remain so; and that so little is his private interest in any of the departments, that since his accession to office he has not been able to make an exciseman.... Add to all this that he hates, despises, and is out of friendship or even intimacy with every one of his colleagues at this moment.”[234]
Two years afterward the Marquess repeated the same story in public:[235]—