ke her choice between a recall of her orders in council or
the alternative of seeing the American non-intercourse act revived
against her. But, it is to be observed, the French minister's
announcement of the acceptance of the act of May was not made till
August, and then the revocation of the decrees was not to take effect
till November. November came bringing with it the President's
proclamation, when it soon appeared that there was still to be "tarrying
in the eating of the cake." The decrees were to remain in force at least
three months longer, till it should be known whether Great Britain would
comply with those terms which France--not the United States--made the
condition of revoking the orders in council; and if Great Britain did
not comply, then the French decrees were not revoked. The legality of
the President's proclamation, of course, was questioned. There was, as
Josiah Quincy said in debate in the House, the following February
(1811), "a continued seizure of all the vessels which came within the
grasp of the French custom-house, from the 1st of November down to the
date of our last accounts." Other members, not more earnest, were less
temperate in the expression of their indignation at what, one of them
said, would be called swindling in the conduct of private affairs;
while another declared that the President was throwing the people "into
the embrace of that monster at whose perfidy Lucifer blushed and hell
stands astonished." France knew all this while what England's decision
would be. She was ready to rescind the orders in council when the French
edicts were revoked, but she did not recognize a mere letter from the
French minister, Champagny, to the American ambassador as such
revocation. The second French condition, that England should abandon her
"new principles of blockade" and accept in their place a new French
principle, was peremptorily rejected by the English ministry. That
proposition opened a question not properly belonging to an agreement
touching the decrees and orders,--a question of what was a blockade, and
what could properly be subject to it. Napoleon's doctrine was, not only
that a paper blockade was not permissible by the law of nations, but
that there could be no right of blockade "to ports not fortified, to
harbors and mouths of rivers, which, according to reason and the usage
of civilized nations, is applicable only to strong or fortified places."
Mr. Emott, a member of the House from Ne