which might the more unite the national councils in the measures to be
pursued.

At the close of the last session of Congress it was hoped that the
successive confirmations of the extinction of the French decrees, so far
as they violated our neutral commerce, would have induced the Government
of Great Britain to repeal its orders in council, and thereby authorize
a removal of the existing obstructions to her commerce with the United
States.

Instead of this reasonable step toward satisfaction and friendship
between the two nations, the orders were, at a moment when least to have
been expected, put into more rigorous execution; and it was communicated
through the British envoy just arrived that whilst the revocation of the
edicts of France, as officially made known to the British Government,
was denied to have taken place, it was an indispensable condition of the
repeal of the British orders that commerce should be restored to a
footing that would admit the productions and manufactures of Great
Britain, when owned by neutrals, into markets shut against them by her
enemy, the United States being given to understand that in the meantime
a continuance of their non importation act would lead to measures of
retaliation.

At a later date it has indeed appeared that a communication to the
British Government of fresh evidence of the repeal of the French decrees
against our neutral trade was followed by an intimation that it had been
transmitted to the British plenipotentiary here in order that it might
receive full consideration in the depending discussions. This
communication appears not to have been received; but the transmission of
it hither, instead of founding on it an actual repeal of the orders or