n
council should be repealed as they affected the United States, without a
revival of blockades violating acknowledged rules, and that there should
be an immediate discharge of American seamen from British ships, and a
stop to impressment from American ships, with an understanding that
an exclusion of the seamen of each nation from the ships of the other
should be stipulated, and that the armistice should be improved into
a definitive and comprehensive adjustment of depending controversies.
Although a repeal of the orders susceptible of explanations meeting the
views of this Government had taken place before this pacific advance was
communicated to that of Great Britain, the advance was declined from an
avowed repugnance to a suspension of the practice of impressments during
the armistice, and without any intimation that the arrangement proposed
with respect to seamen would be accepted. Whether the subsequent
communications from this Government, affording an occasion for
reconsidering the subject on the part of Great Britain, will be viewed
in a more favorable light or received in a more accommodating spirit
remains to be known. It would be unwise to relax our measures in any
respect on a presumption of such a result.

The documents from the Department of State which relate to this subject
will give a view also of the propositions for an armistice which have
been received here, one of them from the authorities at Halifax and in
Canada, the other from the British Government itself through Admiral
Warren, and of the grounds on which neither of them could be accepted.

Our affairs with France retain the posture which they held at my last
communications to you. Notwithstanding the authorized expectations of an
early as well as favorable issue to the discussions on foot, these have
been procrastinated to the latest date. The only intervening occurrence
meriting attention is the promulgation of a French decree purporting to
be a definitive repeal of the Berlin and Milan decrees. This proceeding,
although made the ground of the repeal of the British orders in council,
is rendered by the time and manner of it liable to many objections.

The final communications from our special minister to Denmark afford
further proofs of the good effects of his mission, and of the amicable
disposition of the Danish Government. From Russia we have the
satisfaction to receive assurances of continued friendship, and that it
will not be affected