as interfering with the
monopoly which she covets for her own commerce and navigation. She
carries on a war against the lawful commerce of a friend that she may
the better carry on a commerce with an enemy--a commerce polluted by the
forgeries and perjuries which are for the most part the only passports
by which it can succeed.

Anxious to make every experiment short of the last resort of injured
nations, the United States have withheld from Great Britain, under
successive modifications, the benefits of a free intercourse with their
market, the loss of which could not but outweigh the profits accruing
from her restrictions of our commerce with other nations. And to entitle
these experiments to the more favorable consideration they were so
framed as to enable her to place her adversary under the exclusive
operation of them. To these appeals her Government has been equally
inflexible, as if willing to make sacrifices of every sort rather than
yield to the claims of justice or renounce the errors of a false pride.
Nay, so far were the attempts carried to overcome the attachment
of the British cabinet to its unjust edicts that it received every
encouragement within the competency of the executive branch of our
Government to expect that a repeal of them would be followed by a war
between the United States and France, unless the French edicts should
also be repealed. Even this communication, although silencing forever
the plea of a disposition in the United States to acquiesce in those
edicts originally the sole plea for them, received no attention.

If no other proof existed of a predetermination of the British
Government against a repeal of its orders, it might be found in the
correspondence of the minister plenipotentiary of the United States at
London and the British secretary for foreign affairs in 1810, on the
question whether the blockade of May, 1806, was considered as in force
or as not in force. It had been ascertained that the French Government,
which urged this blockade as the ground of its Berlin decree, was
willing in the event of its removal to repeal that decree, which, being
followed by alternate repeals of the other offensive edicts, might
abolish the whole system on both sides. This inviting opportunity for
accomplishing an object so important to the United States, and professed
so often to be the desire of both the belligerents, was made known
to the British Government. As that Government admits that an a