Acting at once on the theory that Castlereagh’s instructions of April 10 gave the last formal notice intended by the British government, President Madison prepared a Message recommending an immediate declaration of war. This Message was sent to Congress June 1; the two Houses instantly went into secret session, and the Message was read. No one could dispute the force of Madison’s long recital of British outrages. For five years, the task of finding excuses for peace had been more difficult than that of proving a _casus belli_; but some interest still attached to the arrangement and relative weight of the many American complaints. Madison, inverting the order of complaints previously alleged, began by charging that British cruisers had been “in the continued practice of violating the American flag on the great highway of nations, and of seizing and carrying off persons sailing under it.” The charge was amply proved, was not denied, and warranted war; but this was the first time that the Government had alleged impressment as its chief grievance, or had announced, either to England or to America, the intention to fight for redress,--and England might fairly complain that she had received no notice of intended war on such ground. The second complaint alleged that British cruisers also violated the peace of the coasts, and harassed entering and departing commerce. This charge was equally true and equally warranted war, but it was open to the same comment as that made upon the first. The third grievance on which the President had hitherto founded his coercive measures consisted in “pretended blockades, without the presence of an adequate force and sometimes without the practicability of applying one,” by means of which American commerce had been plundered on every sea,--a practice which had come to its highest possible development in the fourth grievance, the sweeping system of blockades known as the Orders in Council. These four main heads of complaint covered numbers of irritating consequences, but no other separate charge was alleged, beyond an insinuation that the hostile spirit of the Indians was connected with their neighborhood to Canada.