id of;
but the difficulty was to find a way to be rid of it so that the nation
should at once maintain its dignity, assert its rights, and escape a
war. The President would have preferred that all British and French
ships be excluded from American ports, and that importations from both
countries should be prohibited except in American vessels; and a bill to
this effect was one of several that was defeated in the course of the
session. But at last, in May (1810), an act was passed excluding only
the men-of-war of both nations, but suspending the non-importation act
for three months after the adjournment of Congress. The President was
then authorized, when the three months were passed, to declare the act
again in force against either Great Britain or France, should the
commercial orders or decrees of either nation be continued in force
while those of the other were repealed.

If the aim of the dominant party had been to devise a scheme sure to
lead to fresh complications more difficult to manage than any that had
gone before, it could not have hit upon a better one than this.
Hitherto, in all the perplexities and anxieties of the situation, the
government had, at least, kept its relations to other powers in its own
hands, to conduct them, whether wisely or unwisely, in its own way. It
could resent or submit to encroachments upon the commerce of the
country, as seemed most prudent; it could close or open the ports, as
seemed most judicious; or it could join forces with that one of its two
enemies whose alliance promised to secure respect on the one hand, and
compel it on the other. But now it had tied itself up in a knot of
provisos. It would do something if England would do something else, or
if France would do something else. If the proposition was accepted by
England and was not accepted by France, then the United States would
remain in friendly relations with England, and assume by comparison an
unfriendly attitude toward France; and if France accepted the condition
and England declined it, then the situation would be reversed. Nothing
would be gained in either case that might not have been gained by direct
negotiation, and, no doubt, on better terms. But if the proposition now
offered should be disregarded by both powers, the situation would be
worse than before. This evidently was Madison's view of the question. He
wrote to Pinkney, the minister at the Court of St. James, a month after
the act was passed: "At the nex