He made no exceptions in favor of American property, for his need of money was greater than ever. While Bassano amused Joel Barlow with conversations that resulted in nothing, he drew up a report to the Emperor, to be laid before the conservative Senate, dealing wholly with the question of neutrals. Circumstances made the appearance of this report peculiarly mortifying to Barlow. Jonathan Russell, who had been sent to act as American _chargé_ at London, wrote to Barlow asking for additional proofs to satisfy Lord Castlereagh that the decrees were repealed. Barlow replied, March 2, by a letter to Russell, recounting seven cases of ships which had been admitted to French ports contrary to the decrees, while in no case had the decrees been enforced.[201] “It is difficult to conceive,” he added, “probably impossible to procure, and certainly insulting to require, a mass of evidence more positive than this or more conclusive to every unprejudiced mind.” Hardly had he written this letter when news arrived that French frigates were burning American vessels on the ocean for infringing the decrees. March 12 he wrote to Bassano a letter of strong protest against these depredations, and a demand for redress. His letter received no answer. Had this been all, gross as the outrage was, nothing need have become public; but on the heels of this scandal came another more flagrant. March 16 the “Moniteur” published Bassano’s official report to the Emperor, which had the character of an Imperial message to the conservative Senate. This document began by defining neutral rights as claimed by France; and while one of these claims required that the flag should cover all goods except arms and other munitions of war, another declared that no blockade was real except of a port “invested, besieged, in the presumption of being taken;” and until these principles should be restored to force by England, “the Decrees of Berlin and Milan must be enforced toward Powers that let their flags be denationalized; the ports of the Continent are not to be opened to denationalized flags or to English merchandise.” Barlow could imagine no way of reconciling this language with Bassano’s assertions that the decrees were withdrawn, and he enclosed the report to Monroe in a letter speculating upon the reason of this contradiction:[202]-- “You will notice that the minister in his report says nothing particular of the United States, and nothing more precise than heretofore on the revocation of the decrees.... I am afraid he is forbidden to designate the United States as out of the gripe of those decrees, because the Emperor did not like the bill we have seen before Congress for admitting English goods contracted for before the Non-importation Law went into operation.”