on our Orders in Council by passing "Acts of non-intercourse" with us; and with France too, on account of her Berlin and Milan decrees (1806 and 1807) which forbade all trade with England and England's produce, and which were in fact the pretext and the alleged justification for our Orders in Council, which claimed rights beyond what the law of nations accorded us and were justifiable only as retaliatory acts. It is clear therefore that the right of search had absolutely nothing whatever to do with the war of 1812. It was the impressment of sailors which was the cause, working on ground already prepared by previous controversies on the subject of blockade. The right of search was a pretension and a right which the Americans acknowledged a few years before on so memorable an occasion that I cannot do better than refer to it.
On the 6th February 1778, the United States made a treaty with France, one
