ctual
application of an adequate force is necessary to the existence of a
legal blockade, and it was notorious that if such a force had ever been
applied its long discontinuance had annulled the blockade in question,
there could be no sufficient objection on the part of Great Britain to a
formal revocation of it, and no imaginable objection to a declaration of
the fact that the blockade did not exist. The declaration would have
been consistent with her avowed principles of blockade, and would have
enabled the United States to demand from France the pledged repeal of
her decrees, either with success, in which case the way would have
been opened for a general repeal of the belligerent edicts, or without
success, in which case the United States would have been justified
in turning their measures exclusively against France. The British
Government would, however, neither rescind the blockade nor declare its
nonexistence, nor permit its nonexistence to be inferred and affirmed
by the American plenipotentiary. On the contrary, by representing the
blockade to be comprehended in the orders in council, the United States
were compelled so to regard it in their subsequent proceedings.

There was a period when a favorable change in the policy of the
British cabinet was justly considered as established. The minister
plenipotentiary of His Britannic Majesty here proposed an adjustment of
the differences more immediately endangering the harmony of the two
countries. The proposition was accepted with the promptitude and
cordiality corresponding with the invariable professions of this
Government. A foundation appeared to be laid for a sincere and lasting
reconciliation. The prospect, however, quickly vanished. The whole
proceeding was disavowed by the British Government without any
explanations which could at that time repress the belief that the
disavowal proceeded from a spirit of hostility to the commercial rights
and prosperity of the United States; and it has since come into proof
that at the very moment when the public minister was holding the
language of friendship and inspiring confidence in the sincerity of the
negotiation with which he was charged a secret agent of his Government
was employed in intrigues having for their object a subversion of our
Government and a dismemberment of our happy union.

In reviewing the conduct of Great Britain toward the United States
our attention is necessarily drawn to the warfare just renewed