No worse ground could have been found for Pinkney to stand upon. He was obliged to begin by asserting, what every public man in Europe knew to be untrue, that “every part of the French Decrees which violated the neutral rights” of America had been repealed by Cadore’s letter of August 5. His next contention, that coasts could not be blockaded, was at least open to dispute when the coast was that of the British Channel. Pinkney’s arguments became necessarily technical, and although technical reasoning might be easily understood in a Court of Admiralty, the attempt to treat politics as a branch of the profession of the law had the disadvantage of refining issues to a point which no large society could comprehend. When Wellesley, Dec. 4, 1810, asked for evidence that Napoleon’s Decrees were repealed, Pinkney replied, in a long note dated December 10,[7] that Cadore’s letter of August 5 stated two disjunctive conditions of repeal,--the first depending on Great Britain, the last on the United States; that although Great Britain had not satisfied the first condition, the United States would undoubtedly satisfy the last; therefore the French Decrees stood repealed. This proposition, not even easy to understand, was supported by a long argument showing that Cadore could not without absurdity have meant anything else. As for further proof, not only had Pinkney none to offer, but he gravely offered his want of evidence as evidence:-- “On such an occasion it is no paradox to say that the want of evidence is itself evidence. That certain decrees are not in force is proved by the absence of such facts as would appear if they were in force. Every motive which can be conjectured to have led to the repeal of the edicts invites to the full execution of that repeal, and no motive can be imagined for a different course. These considerations are alone conclusive.” The argument might have escaped ridicule had not Jonathan Russell been engaged at the same moment[8] in remonstrating with the Duc de Cadore because the “New Orleans Packet” had been seized at Bordeaux under the Berlin and Milan Decrees; and had not the “Moniteur,” within a week, published Cadore’s official Report, declaring that the decrees would never be repealed as long as England maintained her blockades; and had not the Comte de Semonville, within another week, announced in the French Senate that the decrees were the palladium of the seas. Wellesley answered Pinkney, December 29, in a note[9] comparatively short, and more courteous than any important State paper that had come from the British government since Fox’s death.