r of the Decree did not meet the requirements of the late
Order, the Orders in Council were revoked from August 1 next
following; and vessels captured after May 20, the date of Russell's
communicating the Decree, would be released. The ministry thus receded
gracefully under compulsion; and for their own people at least saved
their face.

Superficially the British diplomatic triumph for the moment seemed
complete. They had withdrawn their head from the noose just as it
began to tighten; and they had done so not on any ground of stringent
requirement, but with expressions of desire to go even farther than
their just claims, in order to promote conciliation. Russell naturally
felt a moment of bitter discomfiture. "In yielding, the ministers
appear to have been extremely perplexed in seeking for a subterfuge
for their credit. All their feelings and all their prejudices revolted
at the idea of publicly bending to the Opposition, or truckling to the
United States, and they were compelled to seize on the French Decree
of April 28, 1811, as the only means of saving themselves from the
degradation of acknowledging that they were vanquished. Without this
decree they would have been obliged to yield, and I almost regret that
it existed to furnish a salvo, miserable as it is, for their pride.
Our victory, however, is still complete, and I trust that those who
have refused to support our Government in the contest will at least be
willing to allow it the honors of a triumph."[383]

Russell wrote under the mistaken impression that the repeal of the
Orders had come in time to save war; in which event the yielding of
the British ministry, identified as it was with the Orders in Council,
might be construed as a triumph for the system of peaceable coercion,
by commercial restrictions, which formed the whole policy of Jefferson
and Madison. The triumph claimed by him must be qualified, however, by
the reflection that it was obtained at the expense of becoming the
dupe of a French deception, on its face so obvious as to deprive
mistake of the excuse of plausibility. The eagerness of the
Government, and of its representatives abroad, for a diplomatic
triumph, had precipitated them into a step for which, on the grounds
taken, no justification existed; and they had since then been dragged
at the wheels of Napoleon's chariot, in a constant dust of
mystification, until he had finally achieved the end of his scheming
and landed them in a war fo