was given, and I have had the honour of informing you that it was the only one by which the conditions on which he was to conclude were prescribed. So far from the terms, which he was actually induced to accept, having been contemplated in that instruction, he himself states that they were substituted by you in lieu of those originally proposed.

It may perhaps be satisfactory, that I should say here, that I most willingly subscribe, on this occasion, to the highly respectable authority which you have quoted, and I join issue with you upon the essentials which that authority requires to constitute a right to disavow the act of a publick minister.

It is not immaterial to observe on the qualification contained in the passage you have quoted, as it implies the case of a minister concluding in virtue of a full power. To this it would suffice to answer, that Mr. Erskine had no full power; and his act consequently does not come within the range of your quotation; although it cannot be forgotten, that the United States have, at no very distant period, most freely exercised the right of withholding their ratification from even the authorized act of their own diplomatic agent, done under the avowed sanction of a full power.

I conceive that what has been already said establishes, beyond the reach of doubt or controversy, that his majesty's minister did violate his instructions; and the consequent right in his majesty to disavow an act so concluded. That his majesty had strong and solid reasons for so doing will appear not only from his instructions having been violated, but from the circumstance that the violation of them involved the sacrifice of a great system of policy, deliberately adopted and acted upon, in just and necessary retaliation of the unprecedented modes of hostility resorted to by his enemy.

There appears to have prevailed throughout the whole of this transaction, a fundamental mistake, which would suggest that his majesty had proposed to propitiate the government of the United States, in order to induce it to consent to the renewal of the commercial intercourse between the two countries; as if such had been the relations between Great Britain and America, that the advantages of that intercourse were wholly on the side of the former;

and as if, in any arrangement, whether commercial or political, his majesty could condescend to barter objects of national policy and dignity for permission to trade with another country.

Without minutely calculating what may be the degree of pressure felt at Paris by the difference in the price of goods whether landed at Havre or at Hamburgh, I will, in my turn, appeal to your judgment, sir, whether it be not a strong and solid reason, worthy to guide the councils of a great and powerful monarch, to set bounds to that spirit of encroachment and universal dominion which would bend all things to its own standard? Is it nothing in the present state of the world, when the agents of France authoritatively announce to their victims "that Europe is submitting and surrendering by degrees," that the world should know, that there is a nation which by that divine goodness, so strongly appealed to in the paper to which I allude, (Angereau's proclamation to the Catalonians) is enabled to falsify the assertion? Is it not important at such a moment, that Europe and America should be convinced, that from whatever countries honourable and manly resistance to such a spirit may have been banished, it will still be found in the sovereign of the British nation and in the hearts of his subjects?

As to the precautions taken in England to ensure from injury upon this occasion, the citizens of the United States, and which appear to you to be even yet insufficient, I am confident that in every doubtful case the usual liberality of our tribunals will be exercised in determining upon the circumstances of it; and it was at Mr. Pinkney's express requisition, that additional instructions were given to the commanders of his majesty's ships of war and privateers to extend to vessels trading to the colonies, plantations and settlements of Holland, the same exemption from capture and molestation, as was granted to vessels sailing for any of the ports of Holland.

On the subject of return cargoes from those ports, must observe, that although it was intended to prevent as far as was practicable, the inconveniences likely to be created by the unauthorized agreement made here in April last, yet it was not and could not be intended to obviate all possible inconveniences, even such as might have arisen if no such agreement had ever been made.

If an American vessel had sailed from America for Holland in time of profound peace, or in time of war, the ports of Holland not being at the date of sailing under blockade, it might yet have happened that, in the period between the commencement of such voyage and the arrival of the vessel at the port of destination, a blockade might have been established before that port. The vessel arriving would, in that case, have been warned not to enter the port, and would have been turned away with the loss of the whole object of the voyage. This would be no extraordinary hardship, and would afford no legitimate ground of complaint.

The order in council is far less strict than such a blockade would be, for as much as it provides for the original voyage, commenced in expectation of being admitted to the port of destination, by permitting the entry into the ports of Holland; and it is no just ground of complaint, that it does not superadd to that permission the liberty to re-export a cargo of the enemy's goods or produce.

I beg leave briefly to recapitulate the substance of what I have had the honour to convey to you, as well in a verbal, as in written communications.

I have informed you of the reasons of his majesty's disavowal of the agreement so often mentioned; I have shown them, in obedience to the authority which you have quoted, to be both strong and solid, and such as to outweigh, in the judgment of his majesty's government, every other consideration which you have contemplated; I have shown that that agreement was not concluded in virtue of a full power, and that the instructions given on the occa. sion, were violated.

Beyond this point of explanation which was supposed to have been attained, but which is now given by the present letter, in the form understood to be most agreeable to the American government, my instructions are prospective; they look to substituting for notions of good understanding, erroneously entertained, practical stipulations on which a real reconciliation of all differences may be substantially founded; and they authorize me not to renew proposals which have already been declared here to be unacceptable; but to receive and discuss any proposal made on the part of the United States, and eventually to

conclude a convention between the two countries. It is not of course intended to call upon me to state as a preliminary to negotiation, what is the whole extent of those instructions; they must, as I have before said, remain subject to my own discretion, until I am enabled to apply them to the overtures which I may have the honour of receiving from you.

I have the honour to be, &c.

F. J. JACKSON.

Mr. Jackson to the Secretary of State. Washington, Oct. 27, 1809.

SIR,-Finding by your letter of the 19th instant that, notwithstanding the frequent statements made by me in our conferences of the terms of satisfaction which I am empowered to offer to this country for the unauthorized attack made by one of his majesty's ships of war, upon the frigate of the United States the Chesapeake, I have not had the good fortune to make myself distinctly understood by you, I have the honour to enclose herewith a paper of memoranda, containing the conditions on the basis of which I am ready to proceed to draw up with you the necessary official documents in the form proposed in my letter of the 11th instant, or in any other form upon which we may hereafter agree.

I have the honour to be, &c.

F. J. JACKSON.

Enclosed in Mr. Jackson's Letter of October 27, 1809.

THE President's proclamation of July, 1807, prohibiting to British ships of war the entrance into the harbours of the United States having been annulled, his majesty is willing to restore the seamen taken out of the Chesapeake, on reserving to himself a right to claim in a regular way, by application to the American government, the discharge of such of them (if any) as shall be proved to be either natural born subjects of his majesty, or deserters from his majesty's service.

His majesty is willing to make a provision for the families of such men as were slain on board the Chesapeake in

consequence of the unauthorized attack upon that frigate; provided that such bounty shall not be extended to the family of any man who shall have been either a natural born subject of his majesty, or a deserter from his majesty's service.

The Secretary of State to Mr. Jackson. Department of State, Nov. 1, 1809.

SIR,-Your letter of the 23d ultimo, which was duly received, would have been sooner acknowledged, had I not by my sickness been rendered for several days utterly un fit for business.

Although the delay and the apparent reluctance, in specifying the grounds of the disavowal of the arrangement with respect to the orders in council, do not correspond with the course of proceeding deemed most becoming the occasion; yet as the explanation has at length been thus made, it only remains, as to that part of the disavowed arrangement, to regret that such considerations should have been allowed to outweigh the solid objections to the disavowal; it being understood at the same time that his Britannick majesty perseveres in requiring as indispensable conditions on the part of the United States, an entire relinquishment of the right to trade with enemies' colonies, and also a permission to the British navy to aid in executing a law of Congress; pretensions which cannot but render abortive all proposals whatever upon this subject, whether made by the United States or by his Britannick majesty.

Whilst you have deemed it proper to offer an explanation with respect to the disavowal of one part of the arrangement, I must remind you that there is not to be found in your letter any like specification of the reasons for the disavowal, nor particularly is it shown that the instructions were violated as to the other part, viz. the case of the Chesapeake; the case in which in an especial manner an explanation was required, and in which only you professed to have authority to make to this government any over

tures.

For the first time it is now disclosed that the subjects arranged with this government by your predecessor, are