nfidentially submitted to Congress, and withdrawn by Mr. Jefferson, in
which the French emperor had declared that he will have no neutrals;"
that the embargo was "a substitute--a mild compliance with this harsh
demand;" that he (Mr. Pickering) had reason to believe that the
President contemplated its continuance until the French emperor repealed
his decrees. He concluded by asserting that an embargo was not necessary
to the safety of our seamen, our vessels, or our merchandise, and was
calculated to mislead the public mind to the public ruin.

This letter, though intended for the Legislature of Massachusetts, was
not communicated to it, the political path of Governor Sullivan not
being coincident with that of Colonel Pickering. But it was soon
published by a friend of the writer. In a letter to Harrison G. Otis, on
the 31st of March, 1808, Mr. Adams published a reply, stating that Mr.
Pickering, in enumerating the _pretences_ (for he thinks there were no
causes) for the embargo, totally omitted the British orders in council,
which, although not made the subject of special communication by the
President, had been published in the _National Intelligencer_ antecedent
to the embargo, the sweeping tendency of whose effects formed, to his
understanding, a powerful motive, and together with the papers a
decisive one, for assenting to the embargo; a measure which he regarded
as "the only shelter from the tempest, the last refuge of our violated
peace." He adds: "The most serious effect of Mr. Pickering's letter is
its tendency to reconcile the commercial states to the servitude of
British protection, and war with all the rest of Europe." Regarding it
as a proposition to strike the standard of the nation, he proceeded to
investigate the claims of Great Britain in respect of impressment, and
to her denying neutrals the right of any commerce with her enemies and
their colonies, which was not allowed in time of peace. This result of
the rule of 1756, he asserted, was "in itself and its consequences one
of the deadliest poisons in which it was possible for Great Britain to
tinge the weapons of her hostility." The decrees of France and Spain, by
which every neutral vessel which submitted to English search was
declared "_denationalized_," and became English property, though cruel
in execution, and too foolish and absurd to be refuted, were but the
reasoning of British jurists, and the simple application to the
circumstances and powers