Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 2).djvu/422

 *

motives of state policy operating respectively upon the interests of each country. In the beginning of the year, in order to leave no pretext for England, the American minister at Paris pressed the French government to issue an official or authentic Act; and at length, on the 10th of May, 1812, he received, as we have seen, a copy of ''a decree dated 28th April, 1811'', by which the Berlin and Milan Decrees were repealed, so that the knowledge of this decree was withheld from the United States for more than a year, and was only brought to light and publicly avowed when Napoleon had so far wrought upon the Americans as to commit them to the unfortunate war with Great Britain.

Peace was happily concluded on the 24th of Dec., 1814, and in 1815 a convention was signed in London between the United States and Great Britain to regulate the commerce and navigation between their respective countries. It was framed upon the model of the English reciprocity treaties, which*