If evidence were necessary to show that no such decree was issued April 28, 1811, Napoleon’s correspondence proves that the Emperor did not consider the subject until April 29, and his note to the Council dated that day is proof that no such decree had then been adopted.[205] Yet such a decree might naturally have been afterward ante-dated without objection. Had the Emperor signed it within the year 1811 he might have set what date upon it he liked, and need have made no mystery of the delay. The interest of Bassano’s conduct lay not so much in his producing an ante-dated paper as in his averring that the paper was not ante-dated, but had been communicated to the American government at the time. The flagrancy of the falsehood relieved it from the usual reproach of an attempt to deceive; but if it did not embarrass Bassano in the telling, it embarrassed President Madison beyond calculation in admitting. Still more characteristic than the calmness with which Bassano made these announcements to the American minister at Paris, was the circumstantial gravity with which he repeated them to his own minister at Washington. Writing the same day, May 10, 1812, he enclosed a copy of the decree, explaining his reasons for doing so:[206]-- “I have learned from Mr. Barlow that he is not acquainted with the Decree of April 28, 1811, ... and I have addressed a copy to him. You yourself, sir, have never acknowledged its reception; you have never mentioned it in any of your despatches; you have never dwelt upon it in any of your interviews with the American Secretary of State. This silence makes me fear that the communication made of it to you under date of May 2, 1811, did not reach you, and I think it proper to enclose herewith a new copy.” He explained at some length why he had ignored this decree in his report to the conservative Senate: “It had become useless to recall in this report a measure in respect to which no one could longer raise a doubt; it would have been even improper to specify the Americans by name; it would have entailed other citations; it would have required too much prominence to be given to the true motives of the Senatus Consultum which was to be proposed. The Emperor had reason to complain of the numerous infractions made by Russia in the Continental system, in spite of her engagement to co-operate with and maintain it. Therefore against Russia were directed the provisions of that report; but although various circumstances rendered war inevitable, it was still necessary to avoid naming her while preparing forces against her.”