“I hasten to announce to you that his Majesty the Emperor has ordered his Minister of Finance to authorize the admission of the American cargoes which had been provisionally placed in deposit on their arrival in France. I have the honor to send you a list of the vessels to which these cargoes belong; they will have to export their value in national merchandise, of which two thirds will be in silks. I have not lost a moment in communicating to you a measure perfectly in accord with the sentiments of union and of friendship which exist between the two Powers.” This was all. No imperial decree of repeal was issued or suggested. President Madison cared little for the released ships; he cared only for the principle involved in the continued existence of the decrees, and Bassano’s letter announced by silence, as distinctly as it could have said in words, that the principle of the decrees was not abandoned. Such were Napoleon’s orders; and in executing them Bassano did not, like Cadore or Talleyrand, allow himself the license of softening their bluntness. Russell knew the letter to be fatal to any claim that the French decrees were withdrawn, but he could do nothing else than send it to London as offering, perhaps, evidence of the “actual relations growing out of the revocation of the Berlin and Milan Decrees.”[314] He wrote to Bassano a letter asking the release of the American vessels captured and brought into French ports as prizes since November 1, but he obtained no answer.[315] A month afterward he wrote again, remonstrating against the excessive tariff duties and the requirement that American vessels should take two thirds of their return cargoes in French silks; but this letter received as little notice as the other. Russell had the mortification of knowing, almost as well as Bassano himself, the motives that guided the Emperor; and July 13 he recited them to the President in language as strong as propriety allowed:[316]--