Mr. Russell to the Earl of Liverpool. London, February 21, 1812.

MY LORD,—I have the honour to inform your lordship that the United States'sloop Hornet left Cowes on the 13th of this month. The statement of this fact does away, I presume, the necessity of a more particular reply to your lordship's note of yesterday, concerning William Bowman, a seaman on board that ship.

I have the honour to be, &c. &c.

JONATHAN RUSSELL. The Most Noble the Earl of Liverpool.

Extract of a Letter from Mr. Russell to the Secretary of State. London, March 4, 1812.

"MANY American vessels which had for a considerable time been wind bound in the ports of this country, were at length released on the 29th ult. by an eastwardly wind, and took their departure for the United States. By some of those vessels, particularly The Friends,' you will have received many letters from me; and you will have learnt, as nearly as it was in my power to inform you, what in your letter of the 18th January you desire to know, viz. 'the precise situation of our affairs with England.'

"Since my letters of the 19th and 22d ultimo, which I trust will have extinguished all expectation of any change here, the motion of lord Lansdown on the 28th February, and that of Mr. Brougham yesterday, have been severally debated in the respective houses of parliament. I attended the discussions on both, and if any thing was wanting" to prove the inflexible determination of the present ministry to persevere in the orders in council without modification or relaxation, the declarations of the leading members of administration on these occasions, must place it beyond the possibility of doubt. In both houses these leaders expressed a disposition to forbear to canvass, in the present state of our relations, the conduct of the United States towards England, as it could not be done without reproaching her in a manner to increase the actual irritation, and

to do away what lord Bathurst stated to be the feeble hopes of preventing war.

"In the house of commons, Mr. Rose virtually confessed that the orders in council were maintained to promote the trade of England at the expense of neutrals, and as a measure of commercial rivalry with the United States. When Mr. Canning inveighed against this new (he must have meant newly acknowledged) ground of defending these orders, and contended that they could be justified only on the principle of retaliation, on which they were avowedly instituted, and that they were intended to produce the effects of an actual blockade and liable to all the incidents of such blockade-that is, that they were meant only to distress the enemy-and that Great Britain had no right to defeat this operation by an intercourse with that enemy which she denied to neutrals; Mr. Percival replied, "that the orders were still supported on the principle of retaliation, but that this very principle involved the license trade; for as France by her decrees had said that no nation should trade with her which traded with England, England retorted, that no country should trade with France but through England. He asserted that neither the partial nor even the total repeal of the Berlin and Milan decrees, as they related to America, or to any other nation, or all other nations, would form any claim on the British government, while the continental system, so called, continued in operation. He denied that this system or any part of the Berlin and Milan decrees were merely municipal. They had not been adopted in time of peace with a view to internal regulation, but in a time of war with a hostile purpose towards England. Every clause and particle of them were to be considered of a nature entirely belligerent, and as such, requiring resis tance and authorizing retaliation on the part of Great Britain. It was idle and absurd to suppose that Great Bri tain was bound, in acting on the principle of retaliation in these times, to return exactly and in form like for like, and to choose the object and fashion the mode of executing it precisely by the measures of the enemy. In adopting these measures France had broken through all the restraints imposed by the laws of nations, and trodden under foot the great conventional code received by the civilized world as prescribing rules for its conduct in war

as well as in peace. In this state of things England was not bound any longer to shackle herself with this code, and by so doing become the unresisting victim of the violence of her enemy, but she was herself released from the laws of nations, and left at liberty to resort to any means within her power to injure and distress that enemy and to bring it back to an observance of the jus gentium which it had so egregiously and wantonly violated. Nor was England to be restricted any more in the extent than in the form of retaliation; but she had a right, both as to the quantity and manner, to inflict upon the enemy all the evil in her power, until this enemy should retrace its steps, and renounce, not only verbally but practically, its decrees, its continental system and every other of its belligerent measures incompatible with the old acknowledged laws of nations. Whatever neutrals might suffer from the retaliatory measures of England was purely incidental, and as no injustice was intended to them they had a right to complain of none; and he rejoiced to observe that no charge of such injustice had that night been brought forward in the house. As England was contending for the defence of her maritime rights and for the preservation of her national existence, which essentially depended on the maintenance of those rights, she could not be expected, in the prosecution of this great and primary interest, to arrest or vary her course, to listen to the pretensions of neutral nations, or to remove the evils, however they might be regretted, which the imperious policy of the times indirectly and unintentionally extended to them."

"As the newspapers of this morning give but a very imperfect report of this speech of Mr. Percival, I have thought it to be my duty to present you with a more particular account of the doctrines which were maintained in it, and which so vitally affect the rights and interests of the United States.

"I no longer entertain a hope that we can honourably avoid war."

Extract of a Letter from Mr. Russell to the Secretary of State. London, March 20, 1812.

"I HAD the honour to address you on the 4th inst. giving a brief account of the debate in the house of commons on the preceding evening. Since then no change in relation to us, has taken place here."

Extract of a Letter from Mr. Russell to the Secretary of State. London, March 28, 1812.

"SINCE I had the honour to address you a few days since, nothing has occurred here to induce a hope of any change in our favour."

Extract of a Letter from Mr. Russell to the Secretary of State. London, April 9, 1812.

"SINCE my last respects to you, nothing of importance to us has occurred here."

REPORT, OR MANIFESTO,

OF THE CAUSES AND REASONS OF WAR WITH GREAT BRITAIN, PRESENTED TO THE HOUSE OF REPRESEN TATIVES BY THE COMMITTEE OF FOREIGN RELATIONS. JUNE 3, 1812.

The Committee on Foreign Relations to whom was referred the Message of the President of the United States, of the 1st of June, 1812, Report

THAT after the experience which the United States have had of the great injustice of the British government towards them, exemplified by so many acts of violence and oppression, it will be more difficult to justify to the impartial world their patient forbearance, than the measures to which it has become necessary to resort, to avenge the wrongs and vindicate the rights and honour of the nation. Your committee are happy to observe, on a dispas

sionate view of the conduct of the United States, that they see in it no cause for censure.

If a long forbearance under injuries ought ever to be considered a virtue in any nation, it is one which peculiarly becomes the United States. No people ever had stronger motives to cherish peace: none have ever cherished it with greater sincerity and zeal.

But the period has now arrived, when the United States must support their character and station among the nations of the earth, or submit to the most shameful degradation. Forbearance has ceased to be a virtue. War on the one side, and peace on the other, is a situation as ruinous as it is disgraceful. The mad ambition, the lust of power and commercial avarice of Great Britain, arrogating to herself the complete dominion of the ocean, and exercis ing over it an unbounded and lawless, tyranny, have left to neutral nations an alternative only between the base surrender of their rights, and a manly vindication of them. Happily for the United States their destiny, under the aid of Heaven, is in their own hands. The crisis is formidable only by their love of peace. As soon as it becomes a duty to relinquish that situation, danger disappears. They have suffered no wrongs, they have received no insults, however great, for which they cannot obtain redress.

More than seven years have elapsed, since the commencement of this system of hostile aggression by the British government, on the rights and interests of the United States. The manner of its commencement was not less hostile than the spirit with which it has been prosecuted. The United States have invariably done every thing in their power to preserve the relations of friendship with Great Britain. Of this disposition they gave a distinguished proof at the moment when they were made the victims of an opposite policy. The wrongs of the last war had not been forgotten at the commencement of the present one. They warned us of dangers, against which it was sought to provide. As early as the year 1804, the minister of the United States at London was instructed to invite the British government to enter into a negotiation on all the points on which a collision might arise between the two countries, in the course of the war, and to propose to it an arrangement of their claims, on fair and reasonable conditions. The invitation was ac