To the first objection, founded on the Rambouillet and Bayonne Decrees, Barlow replied that the American government had habitually distinguished between maritime edicts violating neutral rights and municipal edicts attacking private property. “We could not in strictness arraign such municipal spoliations under the head of violations of our _neutral_ rights, nor of consequence regard them as contemplated by the Acts of Congress defining the acts whose revocation would satisfy the conditions of that Act.” This reasoning, though not quite convincing, might have had weight but for two objections. First, the President himself, in June and July, had declared these municipal spoliations to be contemplated by Macon’s Act as “an indispensable evidence of the just purpose of France;”[255] and, second, the President in November notified Armstrong, that,[256] “in issuing the proclamation, it has been presumed that the requisition contained in that letter [of July 5] on the subject of the sequestered property will have been satisfied.” Barlow’s idea of a municipal spoliation, independent of the _jus gentium_, was an afterthought intended to hide a miscalculation. One other argument was advanced by Barlow. Erskine’s arrangement having been accepted without question of previous British spoliations, not only did impartiality require the same treatment for France, but a different rule “would have led to the embarrassment of obliging the Executive, in case the British government should be desirous of opening a free trade with the United States by repealing its orders, to make it a prerequisite that Great Britain also should indemnify for her respective spoliations.” Such a prerequisite would have been proper, and ought to have been imposed; but Barlow’s argument was again answered by the President himself, who actually insisted on the demand against France, and assumed the demand to be satisfied. If this was partiality to England, the President was guilty of it. Probably at the time he saw reasons for thinking otherwise. The secrecy, the continuance, the pretext of the French seizures, their municipal and vindictive character and direct Imperial agency seemed to set them apart from those of England, which, although equally illegal, were always in the form of lawful trial and condemnation.