Non-intercourse Act. vessels preferred an adventurous commerce and large profits to a ruinous inaction, the United States government removed it; but as the European governments were inflexible in their policy, they immediately afterwards passed the Act of Non-Intercourse,[1] by which all commercial interchanges with France and England were prohibited; the result being the Rambouillet Decree, issued by Napoleon on the 23rd of March, 1810, which ordered that all American vessels and cargoes arriving in any of the ports of France or of countries occupied by French troops, should be seized and condemned.
Secret terms with America. On the 1st of May, 1810, Congress passed a further Act, excluding British and French armed vessels from the waters of the United States, but providing that if either of these nations should modify its edicts by the 3rd of March, 1811, of which fact the President was to give notice by proclamation, and the other did not, within three months after, pursue a similar course, commercial intercourse with the first might be renewed, but not with the second. It, however, appears that while Napoleon was intriguing with the American minister in Paris to concert hostile anti-commercial measures against England, he had issued on the 5th of August, 1810, the Trianon Decree,[2] ordering the sale of all American vessels seized, and the proceeds to be paid into the treasury. In spite, however, of this
- ↑ This Act passed Congress on the 1st of March, 1809; generally it provided that the "commerce of America was opened to all the world except France and England." The ships of war of both countries were excluded from American ports ('Key to Orders in Council,' No. 11).
- ↑ 'Report of the Chamber of Deputies,' 1835.
