fect on either side, has lost much of their interest.

The following extracts contain the latest and most material part of the above correspondence.

GEN. ARMSTRONG TO MR MADDISON.

Paris, July 26. 1808. "It would have given me the highest pleasure to have drawn from this Government such explanations on the general sub. ject of our differences with them, as would have met the friendly and equitable views of the United States; but I owe it as well to you as to myself to declare, that every attempt for that purpose hitherto made has failed, and under circumstances, which by no means indicate any change, in this respect, for the better."

GEN. ARMSTRONG TO MR CHAMPAGNY.

Paris, Aug. 6. 1808.

"Mr Armstrong thinks proper to state his regret, that the political relations of the two Powers should continue to wear an aspect less auspicious to their future good understanding than is wished for by those who are the friends of both.

"That his Majesty (Napoleon) has a right to make such municipal regulations as he may deem proper, with regard to foreign commerce, neither is nor has been denied. For example, he may forbid the entry into the ports of France of American ships which have touched in England, or been destined to England; and he may either sequester or confiscate such vessels of the United States as shall infract these laws, after due promulgation and notice thereof; but beyond this the United States hope and believe that his Majesty will not go.

"M. de Champaigny will not fail to see the distinction which these remarks present, between the authority of municipal regulations and that of the public law, and will decide whether it does nor does not offer a ground on which a good understanding, so long and so usefully maintained between the United States and France, may be preserved, and a degree of intercourse revived between them, which shall have the effect of reanimating their former industry.

"Does his Majesty fear that the balance of trade arising from this renewed industry would go to the advantage of England? Means are certainly not wanting to prevent this consequence. Would it not be entirely avoided by making it a condition of the commerce in question, that all ships leaving France shall take (in some artide or articles of her produce or manufac

ture) the full amount of the cargoes they bring thither?

"Ships sailing under this regulation would or would not go voluntarily to England. If they went voluntarily, it would only be because that country afforded the best markets for the productions of France, in which case the habitual results would be receive a balance for her manufactures, entirely changed, and England, ceasing to would begin to pay one to the United States on the productions of France. Could France wish a state of commerce more prosperous than this?

"If, on the other hand, the American ships did not go voluntarily to England, cation, it may be fairly presumed, that the but were captured and sent in for adjudiUnited States would no longer hesitate about becoming a party in the war against England.

"Thus, in either case, the interests of his Majesty would be directly advanced by the measure, and the wishes of his Majesty directly promoted."

MR PINCKNEY TO MR CANNING.

London, Aug. 23. 1808. "It is not my purpose to recapitulate in this note the statements and reasonings contained in the letters of Mr Madison, in support of the claim of the Government of the United States that the British Orders be revoked. But there are explanations which these letters do not contain, and which it is proper for me now to make. These explanations show, that while every motive of justice conspires to produce a disposition to recal the Orders of which my Government complains, it is become apparent that even their professed object will be best attained by their revocation.

"I had 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 authorise 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 authorised to give you this assurance in the most formal manner; and I trust that, upon impartial inquiry, it wil 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 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 coun

tries will be immediately resumed; while, if France should adhere to her 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 dominions, all the alledged purposes of the British Orders will have been at once fulfilled."

MR CANNING TO MR PINCKNEY.

Foreign Office, Sept. 28. The undersigned, his Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, has the honour to inform Mr Pinckney, that he has laid his letter before the King, and he is commanded to assure Mr Piuekney, that the answer to the proposal which Mr Pinckney 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 interest 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 realised, and the undersigned is therefore commanded to communicate to Mr Pinckney the decision, which, under the circumstances as they stand, his Majesty feels himself, compelled, however unwilling, to adopt.

The mitigated measure of retaliation announced by his Majesty in the orders in Council of the 7th January; of the further extension of that measure (an

extension in operation, but not in principle) by the orders in Council of November, was 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 those 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 expence of a concession, made, not to America, but to France.

If, as it has more generally been represented by the Government of the United States, the embargo is only to be considered as an innocent municipal regulation, which affects none but the United States themselves, and with which no foreign state has any concern; his Majesty then does not conceive that he has the right to make any complaint of it, and he has made none. But in this light, there appears not only no reciprocity, but no assignable relation between the repeal by the United States of a measure of voluntary self-restriction, and the surrender by his Majesty of his right of retaliation against his enemies.

The Government of the United States is not now to be informed, that the Berlin decree of November 21, 1806, was the practical commencement of an attempt, not merely to check or impair the prosperity of Great Britain, but utterly to annihilate her political existence through the ruin of her commercial prosperity; that in this attempt almost all the powers of the European continent have been compelled, more or less, to co-operate, and that the American

ema

embargo, though most assuredly not in. tended to that end, (for America can have no real interest in the subversion of the British power, and her rulers are too enlightened to act from any impulse against the real interests of this country,) but by some unfortunate concurrence of circumstances, without any hostile intention, the American embargo did come in aid of the blockade of the European continent, precisely at the very moment when, if that blockade could have succeeded at all, this interposition of the American Government would most effectually have contributed to its

success.

To this universal combination, his Majesty has opposed a temperate, but a determined retaliation upon the enemy, trusting that a firm resistance would defeat this project, but knowing that the smallest concession would infallibly encourage a perseverance in it.

The struggle has been viewed by other powers, not without an apprehension that it might be fatal to this country. The British Government has not disguised from itself that the trial of such an experiment might be lung and arduous, though it has never doubted of the final issue. But if that issue, such as the British Government confidently anticipated, has providentially arrived much sooner than could have been hoped; if" the blockade of the continent," as it has been triumphantly styled by the enemy, is raised even before it had been well established; and if that system, of which extent and continuity were the vital principles, is broken up into fragments, utterly harmless and contemptible, it is nevertheless important, in the highest degree, to the reputation of this country (a reputation which constitutes great part ofher power,) that this disappointment of the hopes of ber enemies should not have been purchased by any concession, nor that a doubt should remain to distant times of her determination and of her ability to have continued her resistance, and that no step which could even mistakenly be construed into concession, should be taken on her part, while the smallest link of the confederacy remains undissolved, or while it can be a question, whether the plan devised for her destruction has or has not either completely failed, or been unequivocally abandoned.

These considerations compel his Majesty to adhere to the principles on which the orders in Council of the 7th January and the 11th November are founded, su long as France adheres to that systém by which his Majesty's retaliatory measures were occasioned and justified.

It remains for the under-signed to take notice of the last paragraph of Mr Pinckney's letter.-There cannot exist, on the part of Mr Pinckney, a stronger wish than there does on that of the under signed, and of the British Government, for the adjustment of all the differences subsisting between the two countries. His Majesty has no other disposition than to cultivate the most friendly intercourse with the United States. The under-signed is persuaded that Mr Pinckney would be one of the last to imagine, what is often idly asserted, that the depression of any other country is necessary or serviceable to the prosperity of this. The prosperity of America is essentially the prosperity of Great Britain, and the strength and power of Great Britain are not for herself only, but for the world.

When those adjustments shall take place, to which, though unfortunately not practicable at this moment, nor under the conditions prescribed by Mr Pinckney, the under-signed, nevertheless, confidently looks forward, it will perhaps be no insecure pledge for the continuance of the good understanding between the two countries, that they will learn duly to appreciate each other's friendship, and that it will not hereafter be imputed to Great Britain, either, on the one hand, that she envies American industry, as prejudicial to British commerce, or, on the other hand, that she is compelled to court an intercourse with America as absolutely necessary to her own existence.

The undersigned is commanded, in conclusion, to observe, that nothing is said in Mr Pinckney's letter of any intention to repeal the proclamation by which the ships of war of Great Britain are interdicted from all those rights of hospitality in the ports of the United States, which are freely allowed to the ships of his Majesty's enemies. The continuance of an interdiction, which, under such circumstances, amounts so nearly to direct hostility, after the willingness professed, and the attempt made

by

by his Majesty to remove the cause on which that measure had been originally founded, would afford but an inauspicious omen for the commencement of a system of mutual conciliation; and the omission of any notice of that measure in the proposal which Mr Pinckney has been instructed to bring forward, would have been, of itself, a material defect in the overtures of the President.

But the undersigned is commanded no further to dwell upon this subject, than for the purpose of assuring Mr Pinckney, that on this, and every other point in discussion between the two Governments, his Majesty earnestly desires the restoration of a perfect good understanding, and that his Majesty would decline no measure for the attainment of that object, which should be compatible with his own honour and just rights, and with the interest of his people. (Signed) GEORGE Canning,

At a general meeting of the Federal republican young men of the city of New York, convened by public notice, on Saturday the 12th November, the following resolutions were unanimously agreed to.

"Resolved, That the embargo is an oppressive and ruinous measure, operating only with destructive energy on ourselves, while it has rendered us objects of the contempt and ridicule of that nation against which it was invidiously directed, but whose interest it now particularly subserves.

"Resolved, That its continuance, in the present state of the world, will tend to the complete prostration of the agricultural and commercial interests of our country.

"Resolved, That, dreading the consequence of seeking redress of our grievances in any other than a constitutional way, we pledge ourselves to each other, and to our suffering fellow-citizens, to use all our zeal, influence, and activity, to promote a change of men, by which alone we can expect a change of measures,"

A private letter from New York, says, "So general is the expectation that Congress will soon raise the embargo, that all the produce of the country is now coming into this city. Already the stores are full, and many of the wharfs are loaded with immense piles of beef, pork, &c. Not less than 100 sail of vessels are now loading

here.

We have before us a list of American vessels taken by the French under circumstances of peculiar aggravation. The contempt, indeed, with which the policy of the Government of the United States is view

ed by Bonaparte, becomes every day more. manifest. The flag of the former is no longer respected by the French cruizers. They make prize of American vessels wherever they meet with them. Two vessels which had sailed from New-York for the West Indies in October, under the President's licence, were met with on their return home by three French privateers, who took out their whole cargoes, consisting of dollars to a considerable amount, rum, su- › gar, coffee, and stript the ships of their provisions, and their crews of their cloaths; after which they sunk one, and let the other go. To all representations and remonstran ces against the injustice of such proceedings, the constant answer is, " An embargo exists in America, and no vessel can legally depart from thence. You are therefore eiof your own country, and under these cirther an impostor, or have broken the laws cumstances are a fair object of capture." Bonaparte has also lately shown a disposi

tion to make American seamen contribute to his purposes in the same way that he has the inhabitants of the countries he has overrun, to his military strength. The crews. of several American ships that have been carried into ports subject to France, have had the option given them, either to be considered as prisoners, and treated as such, or to enter on board the French ships of Several of them have preferred the latter. Against these atrocious and tyrannical proceedings, Gen. Armstrong is understood to have strongly, but ineffectually remonstrated.

war.

CONTINUANCE OF THE EMBARGO.

The latest intelligence from America was brought to England by the Chesterfield packet, which left New York on the 15th December. No hope can now be entertained of the adjournment of the present differences.

tion continued for several days. It was at length decided by a large majority of Congress, for the continuance of the embargo. A Committtee of the House of Representatives had proposed to the House the passing of a non-intercourse act, prohibiting for a time to be limited, the entrance of any armed or unarmed vessel, belonging to Great Britain ar hibiting the admission of goods or ma France, into the ports of America-pronufactures, the produce of the two countries, or their colonies; and, in fine, putting an end to all intercourse with them. The Committee declare, that it is not for the dignity of the United States to

The debate on Mr Chittenden's mo

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