The proposed bill lay on the Speaker’s table. February approached, and still Congress did nothing; yet this delay substituted in place of the Constitution a system of government by proclamation. In two instances involving not only foreign war, but also more than half the foreign trade and several principles of fundamental law, the country depended in February, 1810, on two Executive proclamations, which rested on two assertions of fact that no one believed to be true. In spite of Madison and his proclamations, West Florida was not a part of Louisiana; Napoleon had not withdrawn his decrees,--and Congress was unwilling to support either assertion. Unless the Berlin and Milan Decrees were repealed Nov. 1, 1810, as Cadore’s letter was held to promise, neither President nor Congress could reasonably take the ground that Cadore’s letter, of itself, revived the non-intercourse against England. The United States had the right to make war on England with or without notice, either for her past spoliations, her actual blockades, her Orders in Council other than blockades, her Rule of 1756, her impressments, or her attack on the “Chesapeake,” not yet redressed,--possibly also for other reasons less notorious; but the right to make war did not carry with it the right to require that the world should declare to be true an assertion which the world knew to be false. Unless England were a shrew to be tamed, President Madison could hardly insist on her admitting the sun to be the moon; and so well was Congress aware of this difficulty that it waited in silence for two months, until, February 2, the President’s proclamation went into effect; while the longer Congress waited, the greater became its doubts. Only one proof could be admitted as sufficient evidence that the French Decrees were repealed. The Emperor had violated American rights by decree, and until he restored them by decree no municipal order of his subordinates could replace the United States in the position they claimed. For this reason the President and Congress waited anxiously for news from Paris to November 1, when the decree of appeal should have issued. The news came, but included no decree. The President then assumed that at least the Decrees of Berlin and Milan would not be enforced in France after November 1; but letters from Bordeaux, dated Dec. 14, 1810, brought news that two American vessels which entered that port about December 1 had been sequestered. No other American vessels were known to have arrived in French ports except with French licenses.