onditions; and, third, to
involve the United States and England in new disputes, which might lead
to war. Everything turned out as the emperor wished. The President
accepted the conditional withdrawal of the French decrees, as in
accordance with the act of Congress; England refused to recognize a
contingent withdrawal as a withdrawal at all; and the result at length
was war between England and the United States.

The acquiescence of the President in the decision of Napoleon was the
more significant inasmuch as Mr. Smith, the secretary of state, had
assured the French government, when a copy of the act of May was sent to
it, that there could be no negotiation under the act until another
matter was disposed of. A decree, issued at Rambouillet in March, 1810,
and enforced in May, ordered the confiscation of all American ships then
detained in the ports of France, and in Spanish, Dutch, and Neapolitan
ports under the control of France. The loss to American merchants,
including ships and cargoes, was estimated to be about forty million
dollars. This decree was ostensibly in retaliation of that act of
non-intercourse passed by Congress more than a year before, and was,
therefore, a retrospective law. The non-intercourse act, moreover, had
expired by its own limitation months before many of these ships were
seized; but all, nevertheless, were confiscated, though some of them had
entered the ports merely for shelter. By order of the President, Smith
wrote to Armstrong, the American minister at Paris, that "a satisfactory
provision for restoring the property lately surprised and seized, by the
order or at the instance of the French government, must be combined with
a repeal of the French edicts, with a view to a non-intercourse with
Great Britain; such a provision being an indispensable evidence of the
just purpose of France toward the United States." The injunction was
repeated a few weeks later; but when the emperor's decision upon the
decrees was announced, in August, the "indispensable" was dispensed
with, and a few months later an absolute refusal of any compensation for
the spoliation under the Rambouillet decree was quietly submitted to.

But meanwhile the President, in November, issued a proclamation
announcing that France had complied with the act of the previous May and
revoked the decrees, while the English orders in council remained
unrepealed. But England still had three months, according to the act, in
which to ma