and detentions were dismissed because they had not been brought before the Council of Prizes. Though Livingston supposed when the convention was made that the sum of 20,000,000 francs, or $3,750,000, would suffice to pay all admissible claims, the fact proved to be otherwise. The final disposition of the claims having been undertaken by the French Government, their liquidation and payment became the subject of a violent controversy, in which charges of corruption were freely made. In 1807 Maclure published the journal of the board in Philadelphia. It makes a pamphlet of 145 pages. On the cover it is addressed “To the people of the United States." Inside the cover there is the following inscription: "To satisfy rational inquiry-prevent misrepresentation and shew how far the late American Commissioners at Paris endeavored to execute what they considered their duties under the convention of April 1803; the following statement of their transactions is respectfully submitted to an enlightened and discriminating Public without any observations or declarations by A MEMBER OF THE LATE BOARD." 4 1S. Ex. Doc. 87, 34 Cong., 1 sess., contains a list of the claims allowed and rejected by the commissioners. Their register was exhibited to the Senate, or to a committee thereof, in the custody of a clerk of the Department of State, but was not printed. 2 Am. State Papers, For. Rel. VI. 175, 179, 183, 187, 199. 3 Adams's History of the United States, II. 48-50. 4 In the Department of State there is a pamphlet entitled: "Two Letters from F. Skipwith, esq., to General Armstrong, with the General's Answers and Sundry documents, Printed 1806. Department of State of the United States." See Mr. Forsyth, Sec. of State, to Mr. Causten, November 10, 1834, MS. Dom. Let. XXVII. 106. CHAPTER B. FRENCH INDEMNITY: CONVENTION WITH FRANCE OF JULY 4, Depredations. 1831. The respite which commerce enjoyed from belligerent Renewal of Belligerent depredations after the Peace of Amiens was destined to be of brief duration, and the renewal of the struggle between France and Great Britain was, ere long, followed by measures which, though they hold in the history of belligerent pretensions an unhappy preeminence, are not even entitled to the merit of originality. Napoleon's continental system, which was based on the idea of subjugating England by destroying her commerce, was, as has been pointed out in the preceding chapter, prefigured by the decrees of the Directory in 1796; and the British orders in council were but the consummation of the claims previously made of a right to prevent neutral commerce from contributing to the support of the enemy.' British Blockades. On April 8, 1806, the British Government, in retaliation for a decree of Prussia, issued on the occupation of Hanover, excluding British trade, declared the mouths of the Ems, Weser, Elbe, and Trave to be in a state of blockade. On the In July 1805 was decided the famous case of the Essex. In the case of the Polly, February 5, 1800, (2 C. Rob. 361) it was held that the landing of cargo and payment of duty in the United States constituted a sufficient interruption of the continuity of a voyage to enable a neutral vessel, in spite of the rule of 1756, to carry a cargo from the colony of a belligerent to the ports of the parent country, and vice versa. Under this decision the American carrying trade greatly flourished. In 1805 the American vessel Esser went to Barcelona and took on board a cargo of Spanish produce for Havana, under instructions, however, to touch at Salem, in Massachusetts, before proceeding to her ultimate destination. Having been captured by a British cruiser, she was condemned, Sir William Scott, who had also delivered the judgment in the case of the Polly, holding that the "mere touching at any port without importing the cargo into the common stock of the country, will not alter the nature of the voyage;" that the existence of an "original intention" to send the vessel on was sufficient to make the voyage continuous; and that a "continued voyage from the colony of the enemy to the mother country, or to any other ports but those of the country to which the vessel belongs, will subject the cargo to confiscation." (5 C. Rob. 368. Criticised in Madison's Works, II. 336.) *Translations and Reprints from the Original Sources of European History, Vol. II. No. 2, p. 17. On March 28, 1806, Count Schulenberg published a decree reciting that, in a treaty concluded between the King of Prussia 16th of May a similar declaration was made in respect of the whole coast of the continent, from the river Elbe to the port of Brest, inclusive. In the following September this blockade was declared to be discontinued as to the coast from the Elbe to the Ems. The Berlin Decree. In the mean time Napoleon had been meditating the adoption of further measures for the enforcement of his continental system. On the 14th of October 1806 he dispersed the Prussian army at Jena, and on the 27th of the same month entered Berlin. On the 21st of November, four days before setting out from the Prussian capital on his journey to Poland and Russia, he signed at the imperial camp the famous Berlin Decree, which significantly declared that its provisions would "continue to be looked upon as embodying the fundamental principles of the Empire" until England should return to the observance of the law of nations on land and sea. In the preamble to the decree it was recited that England did not recognize the law of nations; that she made prisoners of war of noncombatants, and confiscated private property; that she declared places in a state of blockade before which she had not even a single ship of war, and assumed to extend the right of blockade to entire coasts and the whole of an empire; that the object of these measures was to raise the commerce and industry of England upon the ruins of that of the continent; and consequently that whoever dealt on the continent in English goods rendered himself an accomplice of her designs. To oppose an enemy with such arms as he made use of was a natural right, and it was therefore decreed: 1. That the British Isles were in a state of blockade. 2. That all commerce and all correspondence with them were prohibited. 3. That every English subject found in the countries occupied by French troops, or by those of her allies, should be made a prisoner of war. 4. That all property or merchandise belonging to British subjects should be regarded as lawful prize. 5. That all trade in English goods was forbidden, and that all merchandise belonging to England, or coming from her factories or her colonies, was lawful prize. 6. That half the product of confiscation under the preceding articles should go to indemnify merchants f r losses suffered by the capture of their merchant vessels by English cruisers. 7. That no vessel coming directly from England or from the English colonies, or which should have been there since the publication of the decree, should be received in any port. 8. That any vessel contravening the preceding provision by a false declaration should be seized, and the vessel and cargo confiscated as if they were English property. In all cases arising under the decree in the empire, or in the countries occupied by the French army, jurisdiction to pronounce final judgment and the Emperor of the French, it had been stipulated "that the ports of the North Sea, as well as all rivers running into it, shall be shut against the British ships and trade, in the same manner as when the French troops occupied the State of Hanover." (Ann. Reg. 1806 (159).) On April 1 a proclamation was issued by the King of Prussia, taking definitive possession of Hanover. (Ann. Reg. 1806 (160).) 1 Am. State Papers, For. Rel. III. 267. was vested in the Council of Prizes at Paris. The Council of Prizes at Milan was authorized to pronounce final judgment in cases arising" within our Kingdom of Italy." It was also ordered that the decree should be "communicated by our minister of foreign affairs to the King of Spain, of Naples, of Holland, and of Etruria, and to our other allies whose subjects, like ours, are the victims of the unjust and barbarous maritime legislation of England." And, finally, it was declared that "our ministers of foreign affairs, of war, of marine, of finance, and of the police, and our directors-general of the ports are charged with the execution of the present decree so far as it affects them." Application of the When Armstrong, then minister of the United States at Paris, read this decree, he sought from Decrès, the minister of marine, an explanation of it. Decrès answered that he considered it "as thus far conveying no modification of the regulations at present observed in France with regard to neutral navigators, nor consequently of the convention of September 30, 1800, with the United States of America;" but he cautiously added that it would be proper for Armstrong to communicate with the minister of foreign affairs, Talleyrand, who might have more positive information on the subject'. Talleyrand was then absent. Literally and indeed naturally construed, the decree directly violated the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth articles of the convention of 1800, which respectively guaranteed freedom of trade with the enemy in goods not contraband, restricted contraband to certain enumerated articles, and provided that free ships should make free goods. For a period of nine months the Government of the United States, by being kept in a state of hopeful uncertainty as to the effect of the decree, was led to appear to acquiesce in it. On the assumption that only the seventh and eighth articles of the decree, respectively prohibiting the entrance of vessels coming directly from English ports, and denouncing confiscation in such case for the use of false papers, would be enforced against the United States, Armstrong as late as July 7, 1807, wrote to Monroe that it was admitted that the Berlin decree did not violate the convention of 1800. He also stated that of the rule respecting entrance into French ports, he had obtained modifications, so that (1) vessels leaving ports of the United States before the decree was known there were not subject to the rule; (2) vessels not coming directly from a British to a French port were not subject to it; (3) the cargoes of vessels coming directly from a British port to a French port were, on proof that the touching of the ship in England was involuntary, put in sequestration till His Majesty should have decided on the sufficiency of the proof of force majeure, the vessel meanwhile being free to go away. In the following September, however, the imperial purposes were partially disclosed, in such manner as to harmonize with what had actually been taking place. On the 18th of September 1807, Regnier, the minister of justice, writing to the imperial attorney-general for the Council of Prizes, communicated an imperial decision of the 4th of the month on certain questions touching the Berlin decree. Might vessels of war by virtue of the decree seize, on board of neutral vessels, either English property or merchandise proceeding from manufacturers in English territory? In answer, 1Adams's History of the United States, III. 390. it was said that His Majesty had "intimated that, as he had not thought proper to express any exception in his decree, there is no ground for making any in its execution." In the second place it was stated that His Majesty had "postponed a decision on the question, whether French armed vessels might capture neutral vessels bound to or from England, even when they have no English merchandise on board." The purport of this decision, which was also circulated by the director-general of the customs, was that every neutral vessel coming from an English port, with a cargo of English merchandise, or goods of English origin, might be lawfully seized by French armed vessels; and in this sense the Council of Prizes proceeded at once to apply it.2 The practical value of the "modifications" which The Antwerp Cases. Armstrong obtained of the Berlin decree is well illustrated in what were known as the Antwerp cases. After the imperial decision of the 4th of September, several American vessels bound to Antwerp were sent away. Prior to that time, however, seven American vessels which had been compelled to touch in England, were admitted; and in accordance with the modified rule their cargoes were sequestered, the vessels themselves being permitted to depart. On August 9, 1807, Armstrong, writing to Champagny, said: "I learn that the cargoes are yet under sequestration, and that considerable loss as well by diminution of price in the articles, as by accumulation of interests and charges, has been already incurred."3 By an order of July 2, 1808, Bonaparte ordered that the cargoes should be sold and the proceeds placed in the caisse d'amortissement, which was the depository of trust funds and securities, and that inquiry should be made as to whether the vessels were not British. The inquiry having elicited the clearest proof that the vessels and cargoes were exclusively owned by American citizens, the execution of the order of sale was postponed. But in 1810 the last of the cargoes was sold, and by an imperial order of July 22, 1810,4 the proceeds were taken from the caisse d'amortissement and turned into the public treasury. Thus the property was finally devoted to imperial uses without trial or condemnation.5 Orders in Council. To the imperial measures the British Government quickly responded. On January 7, 1807, Lord Howick, referring to the Berlin decree, issued an order in council by which neutral vessels were forbidden to trade from one port to another, both of which were in the possession or control of France or her allies. On the 11th of November further orders were issued. These orders, which were issued on the advice of Spencer Perceval and George Canning, and against the remonstrance of Lord Bathurst, the president of the board of trade, prohibited neutral vessels from trading with the ports of France and her allies, and with all ports in Europe from which, though they were not at war with His Britannic Majesty, the British flag was 1 Am. State Papers, For. Rel. III. 25, 244. 2 Am. State Papers, For. Rel. III. 245. 3 Am. State Papers, For. Rel. III. 243. Adams's Writings of Gallatin, II. 209. 5 Am. State Papers, For. Rel. V. 284, et seq. |