The decision to enforce and re-enforce the non-intercourse against England implied that the President considered Napoleon’s Decrees to be withdrawn. February 17, at latest, the decision was made. February 19 the President sent to Congress a Message containing two French documents.[276] The first was a letter, dated December 25, from the Duc de Massa, Minister of Justice, to the President of the Council of Prizes, which recited the words of Cadore’s letter and the measures taken by the American government in consequence, and ordered that all captured American vessels should thenceforward not be judged according to the principles of the Decrees of Berlin and Milan, which “shall remain suspended;” but such captured vessels should be sequestrated, “the rights of the proprietors being reserved to them until the 2d of February next, the period at which the United States, having fulfilled the engagement to cause their rights to be respected, the said captures shall be declared null by the Council.” The second letter, of the same date, was written by Gaudin, Duc de Gaete, Minister of Finance, to the Director-General of the Customs, directing him thenceforward not to enforce the Berlin and Milan Decrees against American vessels. On these letters, not on any communications from Scrurier, the President rested his decision that the Decrees of Berlin and Milan were so revoked as no longer to violate the neutral commerce of the United States. Obviously they failed to prove more than that the decrees were partially suspended. According to these orders the decrees were not under any circumstances to be revoked, but their operation upon American commerce in France was to cease in case the Emperor should be satisfied that America had previously enforced against England the principles of the decrees. This was the converse of the American demand, and was in effect the attitude of England. The same packet which brought Jonathan Russell’s despatch containing the two letters of the French ministers brought also the “Moniteur” of December 15, which contained the Duc de Cadore’s official Report on Foreign Relations,--a paper understood to express the Emperor’s own language, and to be decisive as to the meaning of his foreign policy:-- “Sire, as long as England shall persist in her Orders in Council, your Majesty will persist in your decrees; will oppose the blockade of the Continent to the blockade of the coast, and the confiscation of British merchandise on the Continent to the pillage on the seas. My duty obliges me to say to your Majesty, You cannot henceforward hope to recall your enemies to more moderate ideas except by perseverance in this system.”