scarcely suited to the occasion, and without also the hazard of indiscretion, to display in detail the signal injustice and impolicy of persevering in them, after what I had proposed. This could be done, and had been done in conversation; but it did not, upon trial, appear to be equally practicable, in the more formal and measured proceeding which I was now called upon to adopt.

I considered, besides, that an overture, so highly advantageous to Great Britain, which the United States were not bound to make by any obligations of equity, although it was wise to make it, did not require, with any view to the character of my country, or even to the success of the overture itself, to be again recommended, by an anxious repetition of arguments already fully understood.

As soon as my note was prepared, I called at the foreign office to arrange an interview with Mr. Canning for the purpose of enabling me to accompany the delivery of it with a communication, which I deemed important, as well as of affording him an opportunity of asking and receiving such explanations as he might desire. The interview took place on the 26th of August.

It had occurred to me that it would be proper (and could not be injurious) to read to Mr. Canning, from your letter to me of the 18th of July, a brief summary of the instructions under which I was acting. This had not been requested; but it could not be unacceptable, and it was, besides, well calculated to do justice to the liberal sentiments by which my instructions had been dictated, as well as to give weight to my efforts in the execution of them.

I was led, by the reading of these passages, (without having originally intended it) into a more extensive explanation, than I had before attempted, of the influence which the proposal of my government would have, in truth, as well as in the judgment of the world, upon the supposed justice of their new system, as it affected the United States. To that explanation, with the particulars of which I will not, and indeed, for want of time, cannot, at present trouble you, I added a concise recapitulation of some of the prudential considerations which had been so often pressed before, and there I left the subject."

Mr. Pinkney to Mr. Madison. London, September 24,

1808.

"I AM now enabled to transmit to you a copy of Mr. Canning's answer, received only last night, to my note of the 23d of August."

"I regret extremely that the views, which I have been instructed to lay before this government have not been met by it as I had at first been led to expect. The overture cannot fail, however, to place in a strong light the just and liberal sentiments by which our government is animated, and, in other respects, to be useful and honourable to our country."

Mr. Pinkney to Mr. Canning. Great Cumberland Place, Aug. 23, 1808.

SIR, I have had the honour, in consequence of the orders of the President, to recall your attention, in the course of several recent interviews, to the British orders in council, of the 7th of January and 11th of November, 1807, and to the various other orders founded upon or in execution of them and I now take the liberty to renew, in the mode which I have understood to be indispensable, my instances on that subject.

I need scarcely remind you, sir, that the government of the United States has never ceased to consider these orders as violating its rights, and affecting most destructively its interests, upon grounds wholly inadmissible, both in. principle and fact.

The letters of Mr. Madison to Mr. Erskine, of the 20th and 29th of March, 1807, produced by the official communication of that minister of the order of the 7th of January, and the answer of Mr. Madison of the 25th of March, 1808, to a like communication of the orders of the 11th of November, contained the most direct remonstrances against the system which these orders introduce and execute, and expressed the confident expectation of the President, that it would not be persisted in.

That expectation has not yet been fulfilled; but it has, notwithstanding, not been relinquished. The President is still persuaded that its accomplishment will result from a careful review, by his majesty's government, made in the spirit of moderation and equity, of the facts and considerations which belong to the occasion.

It is not my purpose to recapitulate, in this note, the statements and reasonings contained in the abovementioned letters of Mr. Madison, in support of the claims of the government of the United States, that the British orders be revoked. I content myself with referring to those letters for proofs which it is not necessary to repeat, and for arguments which I could not hope to improve.

But there are explanations which those letters do not contain, and which it is proper for me to make. Even these, however, may be very briefly given, since you have already been made acquainted, in our late conversations, with all their bearings and details.

These explanations go to show, that, while every motive of justice conspires to produce a disposition to recall the orders of which my government complains, it is become apparent that even their professed object will be best attained by their revocation.

I have the honour to state to you, sir, that it was the intention of the President, in case Great Britain repealed her orders, as regarded the United States, to exercise the power vested in him by the act of the last session of Congress, entitled "An act to authorize the President of the United States, under certain conditions, to suspend the operation of the act laying an embargo on all ships and vessels in the ports and harbours of the United States, and the several supplementary acts thereto," by suspending the embargo law and its supplements, as regards Great Britain.

I am authorized to give you this assurance in the most formal manner; and I trust that, upon impartial inquiry, it will be found to leave no inducement to perseverance in the British orders, while it creates the most powerful inducements of equity and policy to abandon them.

On the score of justice it does not seem possible to mistake the footing upon which this overture places the subject; and I venture to believe that in any other view there is as little room for doubt.

If, as I propose, your orders should be rescinded as to the United States, and our embargo rescinded as to Great Britain, the effect of these concurrent acts will be that the commercial intercourse of the two countries will be immediately resumed; while, if France should adhere to maxims and conduct derogatory to the neutral rights of the United States, the embargo, continuing as to her, will take the place of your orders, and lead, with an efficacy not merely equal to theirs, but probably much greater, to all the consequences that ought to result from them.

On the other hand, if France should concur in respecting those rights, and commerce should thus regain its fair immunities, and the law of nations its just dominion, all the alleged purposes of the British orders will have been at once fulfilled.

If I forbear to pursue these ideas through all the illustrations of which they are susceptible, it is because the personal conferences to which I have before alluded, as well as the obvious nature of the ideas themselves, render it unnecessary.

I cannot conclude this note, without expressing my sincere wish, that what I have now suggested, in conformity with the liberal sentiments and enlightened views of the President, may contribute, not only to remove the more immediate obstacles to the ordinary intercourse of trade between your country and mine, in a manner consistent with the honour of both, but to prepare the way for a satisfactory adjustment of every question important to their future friendship.

I have the honour to be, &c.

WILLIAM PINKNEY. The Rt. Hon. George Canning, &c. &c.

Mr. Canning to Mr. Pinkney. Foreign Office, September 23, 1808.

THE undersigned, his majesty's principal secretary of state for foreign affairs, had the honour to receive the official letter addressed to him by Mr. Pinkney, minister plenipotentiary of the United States, respecting the orders in council issued by his majesty on the 7th of January and 11th of November, 1807.

He has laid that letter before the king: and he is commanded to assure Mr. Pinkney, that the answer to the proposal, which Mr. Pinkney was instructed to bring forward, has been deferred only in the hope that the renewed application, which was understood to have been recently made by the government of the United States to that of France, might, in the new state of things which has arisen in Europe,have met with such a reception in France, as would have rendered the compliance of his majesty with that proposal consistent, as much with his majesty's own dignity, and with the interests of his people, as it would have been with his majesty's disposition towards the United States.

Unhappily, there is now no longer any reason to believe, that such a hope is likely to be realized; and the undersigned is, therefore, commanded to communicate to Mr. Pinkney the decision, which, under the circumstances as they stand, his majesty feels himself compelled, however unwillingly, to adopt.

The mitigated measure of retaliation, announced by his majesty in the order in council of the 7th of January, and the further extension of that measure (an extension in operation, but not in principle) by the orders in council of November, were founded (as has been already repeatedly avowed by his majesty) on the "unquestionable right of his majesty to retort upon the enemy the evils of his own injustice;" and upon the consideration, that "if third parties incidentally suffered by these retaliatory measures, they were to seek their redress from the power, by whose original aggression that retaliation was occasioned."

His majesty sees nothing in the embargo, laid on by the President of the United States of America, which varies this original and simple state of the question.

If considered as a measure of impartial hostility against both belligerents, the embargo appears to his majesty to have been manifestly unjust, as, according to every principle of justice, that redress ought to have been first sought from the party originating the wrong. And his majesty cannot consent to buy off that hostility, which America ought not to have extended to him, at the expense of a concession made, not to America, but to France.