Quite early in Wellesley’s career as Foreign Secretary, an opportunity occurred to test his energies. January 25, 1810,[225] Armstrong sent to Pinkney a copy of Napoleon’s offer to withdraw the Decree of Berlin, if England would withdraw her previous blockade of the coast from Elbe to Brest. Nothing could be easier for England. The blockade of May 16, 1806, had been invented by Charles James Fox at the beginning of his short Administration as an act of friendship toward the United States, in order to evade the application of Sir William Scott’s legal principles; it was strictly enforced only between Ostend and the Seine, a short strip of coast within the narrow seas completely under British control, and in part visible from British shores, while the subsequent Orders in Council had substituted a series of other measures in place of this temporary device, until at last the blockade of Holland and the Empire, from the river Ems to Trieste,--in which, April 26, 1809, the restrictive system of England was merged,--seemed to sweep away all trace of the narrower restraint. No one but Sir William Scott could say with certainty, as matter of law, whether Fox’s blockade was or was not in force; but for years past England had established a depot at Helgoland in the mouth of the Elbe, for no other purpose than to violate its own blockade by smuggling merchandise into Germany, Denmark, and Holland. From every point of view the continued existence of Fox’s blockade seemed impossible to suppose. February 15 Pinkney wrote to Wellesley, asking whether that or any other blockade of France previous to January, 1807, was understood to be in force.[226] March 2 Wellesley replied that the restrictions imposed in May, 1806, “were afterward comprehended in the Order of Council of Jan. 7, 1807, which order is still in force.”[227] This reply encouraged Pinkney to infer that Fox’s blockade had merged in Howick’s Order in Council. March 7 he wrote again to the Marquess,[228]-- “I infer ... that the blockade ... is not itself in force, and that the restrictions which it established rest altogether, so far as such restrictions exist at this time, upon an Order or Orders in Council issued since the first day of January, 1807.” To this easy question, which seemed hardly worth answering in the negative, Wellesley replied, March 26,[229] “The blockade notified by Great Britain in May, 1806, has never been formally withdrawn. It cannot, therefore, be accurately stated that the restrictions which it established rest altogether on the Order of Council of Jan. 7, 1807; they are comprehended under the more extensive restrictions of that Order.” This explanation, however satisfactory it might be to the admiralty lawyer who may have framed it, conveyed no clear idea to the diplomatic mind. The question whether the blockade of 1806 was or was not still in force remained obscure. Pinkney thought it not in force, and wrote to Armstrong,[230]--