Russell sent to Monroe these private accounts, adding a few details to show more exactly the Emperor’s meaning. Writing April 4, he said that no American vessel had been allowed an entry since February 4 unless carrying a license; that a secret order had then been given to the custom-house to make no reports on American cases; that the Council of Prizes had suspended its decisions; and that, notwithstanding Cadore’s promise, licenses were still issued. “If the license system,” concluded Russell, “were concerned, as the Duke of Cadore suggests, to favor American commerce during the existence only of the Berlin and Milan Decrees, it is probably necessary to infer from the excuse of that system the continuance of those decrees.” Left without powers or instructions, Russell could thenceforward do nothing. Remonstrance was worse than useless. “A representation of this kind,” he wrote, “however mildly it might portray the unfriendly and faithless conduct of this Government, might have hastened a crisis which it does not become me to urge.” At length, April 25, despatches arrived from America enclosing the Non-intercourse Act of March 2 and the secret Act for taking possession of Florida. The President’s accompanying instructions[310] ordered Russell to explain that the different dates fixed by the Proclamation and by the Act for enforcing the non-intercourse against England were owing to the different senses in which Cadore’s letter had been construed in France and America,--the President having assumed that the decrees would have been extinct Nov. 1, 1810, while the French government, “as appears from its official acts, admits only a suspension with a view to a subsequent cessation.” These instructions, as well as Russell’s despatches for the most part, were never communicated to Congress. April 17, a week before these documents arrived, Napoleon made a sudden change in his Cabinet, by dismissing Cadore and appointing Hugues Maret, Duc de Bassano, as his Minister of Foreign Affairs. No one knew the cause of Cadore’s fall. He was mild, modest, and not given to display. He “lacked conversation,” Napoleon complained. Probably his true offence consisted in leaning toward Russia and in dislike for the commercial system, while Maret owed promotion to opposite tendencies. Maret’s abilities were undoubted; his political morality was no worse than that of his master, and perhaps no better than that of Cadore or of Talleyrand whom he hated.[311] He could hardly be more obedient than Cadore; and as far us America was concerned, he could do no more mischief.