was an awkward dilemma for the President and his minister to France. But
by this time, the Presidential nomination impending, Mr. Madison had
made up his mind what to do. He was not exactly a wolf; neither was
Great Britain a lamb; but the argument he used was the argument of the
fable. Instead of advising--Bassano having declared the decrees still in
force--a repeal of the non-importation act, as Great Britain claimed was
in justice and comity her due, he recommended a war measure. But Barlow
evidently felt himself to be under some decent restraint of logic and
consistency. He urged upon the French minister the necessity now of a
positive and imperial declaration that the decrees, so far as regarded
the United States, were absolutely revoked; for this recent assertion of
Bassano, that they were still in force, put the United States in an
attitude both towards France and England utterly and absurdly in the
wrong. Barlow represented that, should the revocation be extended only
to the United States, Great Britain would not for that alone repeal her
orders. In that case France would lose nothing of the advantage of her
present position, while everything would be lost should the United
States be compelled to repeal her non-importation laws against England.
Bassano was quick to see the necessity of jumping into the bramble-bush
and scratching his eyes in again, and he then produced his year-old
edict. Being a year old, it of course covered all questions. But was it
a year old? Who knew? It had never been published? No, the duke said;
but it had been shown to Mr. Jonathan Russell, who at that time was
charge d'affaires at Paris. Mr. Russell denied it, though a denial was
hardly needed. He would not have ventured to withhold information so
important from his government; and it was evident, from the tone of his
dispatches of a subsequent date, that he had no suspicion of its
existence. For he had maintained it, as a point of "national honor,"
that the revocation of the French decrees must have preceded the
President's proclamation of November 1, 1810; and this he would not have
dared to do had he known that the actual revocation by the French
minister was not made till six months after the date of the President's
proclamation, and was then made secretly.

However, as if to defeat all these machinations of France and the United
States, Great Britain immediately recalled her orders in council, when,
in May, 1812, the Duke of Bassa