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 isio-ii] Napoleon's conduct; tension with Great Britain. 333 good to be lost. The Emperor at once decided to accept the offer ; and Champagny in August informed the American Minister that on November 1, 1810, the Decrees of Berlin and Milan would be revoked if, by that time, Great Britain recalled her Orders in Council, or the United States caused " her rights to be respected by the English." On November 2, 1810, President Madison accordingly issued a proclamation serving three months' notice on Great Britain and naming February 2, 1811, as the day when non -intercourse would come into effect as to Great Britain, unless, before that date, the Orders in Council were revoked. When the day came, Great Britain had not recalled her Orders ; and Congress three weeks later passed a bill which revived nine sections of the Non-intercourse Act of 1809 and prohibited all importation of British goods. By this time the relations of Great Britain and the United States had become more strained than ever. The British government had appointed no successor to Rose ; the American Minister therefore asked for his passports and left London. Thereupon the British government in alarm appointed Augustus Foster, who reached Washington in July, 1811. His instructions empowered him to do one thing only to settle the Chesapeake affair in any manner satisfactory to the United States. It would have been well, therefore, if he had set about this at once. But he began his mission with a protest against the Non-intercourse Act, a declaration that the Decrees of Berlin and Milan had not been repealed, and an assurance that, till they were repealed, the Orders in Council which depended on them would never be revoked. That the Decrees had not been repealed was true, for since November 1, 1810, several American vessels which had visited British ports had been seized and their cargoes confiscated ; and sixteen others which came direct from the United States had been sequestered. The latter were soon released; but those captured for having touched at British ports were not set free. All this, according to Napoleon, was quite regular. The Berlin and Milan Decrees had been repealed so far as regarded the United States, but the municipal ordinances of the French ports were still in force; and it was under these that the seizures had been made a statement just the reverse of the truth, for the vessels retained had come from British ports, and therefore, falling under the Decrees, should have been released, while those set free came direct from America and had not violated the Decrees at all. Madison, however, accepted the explanation, and, finding that Foster persisted in stating that the Decrees were yet in force, and therefore in his refusal to revoke the Orders, issued a proclamation summoning Congress to meet in special session on November 4, 1811. In his message to that body he complained that the repeal of the French Decrees had not induced Great Britain to recall her Orders; that they were at that moment more aggressively enforced than ever, while the United States had been given to understand that a continuance of the Non-importation Act would provoke retaliation ; CH. IX.