ld step forward and decide; that it
was not consistent with the responsibility they owed the community to
turn over to judicial tribunals the decision of the question, whether
the Non-Intercourse was in force or not."[342] The matter was thus
taken from the purview of the courts, and decided by a party vote.
After an exhausting discussion, this bill passed at 4 A.M., February
28, 1811. It was approved by the President, March 2.

For the settlement of American litigation this course was adequate;
not so for the vindication of international procedure. The United
States at this time had abundant justification for war with both
France and Great Britain, and it was within the righteous decision of
her own policy whether she should declare against either or both; but
it is a serious impeachment of a Government's capacity and manfulness
when, with such questions as Impressment, the Orders in Council,
Napoleon's Decrees, and his arbitrary sequestrations, war comes not
from a bold grappling with difficulties, but from a series of
huckstering attempts to buy off one antagonist or the other, with the
result of being fairly overreached. The outcome, summarily stated, had
been that a finesse of the French Government had attached the United
States to Napoleon's Continental System. She was henceforth, in
effect, allied with the leading feature of French policy hostile to
Great Britain. It was perfectly competent and proper for her so to
attach herself, if she saw fit. The Orders in Council were a national
wrong to her, justifying retaliation and war; still more so was
Impressment. But it is humiliating to see one's country finally
committed to such a step through being outwitted in a paltry bargain,
and the justification of her course rested, not upon a firm assertion
of right, but upon the refusal of another nation to accept a
manifestly unequal proposition. The course of Great Britain was
high-handed, unjust, and not always straightforward; but it was candor
itself alongside of Napoleon's.

There remained but one step to complete the formal breach; and that,
if the writer's analysis has been correct, resulted as directly as did
the final Non-Intercourse Act from action erroneously taken by Mr.
Madison's Administration. Jackson's place, vacated in November, 1809,
by the refusal to communicate further with him, remained still
unfilled. This delay was thought deliberate by the United States
Government, which on May 22 wrote to Pinkne