WHILE Armstrong coped with Napoleon in Paris, Monroe enjoyed
a brief moment of sunshine on the other side of the Channel. After his
diplomatic disasters he might think himself happy, though he only threw
from his own shoulders upon those of Armstrong and Bowdoin the Florida
negotiation which had thus far injured the reputation of every man
connected with it; but he had double cause of rejoicing. He not only
escaped from Talleyrand and Godoy, but also from William Pitt, whose
body he saw carried amidst the pompous mournings of London in funeral
state to Westminster Abbey, and left in solemn grandeur by the side of
his great father. Pitt died Jan. 23, 1806, exhausted by the anxieties
of office.
At last Fortune smiled upon Monroe with caresses more winning than
any she had shown since her last sudden appearance before his eyes
under the outward semblance of Barbé Marbois in Livingston’s garden on
the Boulevard Montmartre. Old King George, knowing no Tory competent
to succeed Pitt or capable of controlling Parliament, summoned Lord
Grenville and submitted to Charles James Fox. Grenville became First
Lord of the Treasury; Fox took charge of the Foreign Office; Erskine
became Lord Chancellor; Sidmouth, Lord Privy Seal. The union of
different party chiefs was so general as to give the Ministry the
nickname of All the Talents. By February 7 the revolution was completed.
Monroe was greatly pleased, as well he might be, for his position
in England had been hitherto far from comfortable. To soothe the
Tories,--who were prejudiced against him not only as American minister,
but also as having when minister to France actively sympathized with
the French Directory in hostility to England,--Monroe had thought
himself obliged to shun the society of the Whigs, and had been
restricted to such social relations as Pitt’s friends would supply,
which under the best of circumstances were neither extensive nor
amusing. Fox made amends for this self-denial. His statesmanship was
broad and liberal, his manners charming, and he had the quality,
most rare in politics, of entire frankness and truthfulness. In a
few days Monroe wrote home that he had enjoyed his first interview
with the new secretary, “who in half an hour put me more at my ease
than I have ever felt with any person in office since I have been in
England.”[280] Fox said little, but held out hopes; and Monroe had so
long been left without even hope to nourish him that he gladly fed
upon the unaccustomed diet. Nevertheless, more than a month passed
before he ventured to make formal application[281] for an order to
suspend the seizure and condemnation of American vessels under the
rule established by Pitt and Sir William Scott. At length, April 17,
at the Queen’s drawing-room Fox took the American minister aside and
announced himself ready to begin negotiation, and to pursue it without
delay till it should be concluded.[282] He said that no trouble need be
feared about the colonial trade, but that there would be objections to
making payments for property already taken; meanwhile the seizures and
condemnations were to be stopped.
The 1st of May arrived. Three months had passed since the new Ministry
took office, yet nothing had been publicly done to satisfy the United
States. The reason was well known. Fox was obliged to overcome many
kinds of opposition both in and out of the Cabinet. The West Indian
colonies, the royal navy, the mercantile shipping interest, the Tory
country gentlemen, and the Court were all opposed to concessions, and
only the Treasury favored them. To increase Fox’s difficulties, news
began to arrive from the United States of the debate in Congress on the
Non-importation Act, of the loose talk of Congressmen and the vaporings
of the press; and to crown all came the story that the mob of New York
had taken the punishment of Pierce’s manslaughter into its own hands.
The English people honestly believed the Americans to be cheating
them in the matter of the colonial trade; they suspected that their
Yankee cousins were shrewd, and they could plainly see that Jefferson
and Congress were trying to hide behind the shadow of Napoleon.
Non-importation and commercial restriction had no other object than to
give England the alternative of surrendering either to France or to
America what she believed to be the price of her existence without the
chance of fighting for it. Two thirds of the British people understood
the Non-importation Act as a threat,--as though the Americans said,
“Surrender to us your commerce and your shipping, or surrender your
liberties to France.”
Whatever were the faults or sins of England, they were at least such
as Americans could understand. Her Government was guided, as a rule,
by interests which were public, permanent, and easily measured. The
weight of interests which had driven Pitt into his assault on American
commerce was not lessened by the death of Pitt or by the return of Lord
Grenville to power. On every side Fox found these interests active
in opposition and earnest in pressing arguments against concession.
Englishmen were used to giving and receiving hard blows. Seldom long
at peace, they had won whatever was theirs by creating a national
character in which personal courage was as marked a quality as
selfishness; for in their situation no other than a somewhat brutal
energy could have secured success. They knew what to think of war, and
could measure with some approach to exactness its probable costs and
returns, but they were quite unused to being conquered by peace; and
they listened with as much contempt as anger to the American theory
that England must surrender at discretion if Americans should refuse
any longer to buy woollen shirts and tin kettles. Englishmen asked only
whether America would fight, and they took some pains to make inquiries
on that point; but it happened that of all the points in question
this, which to Englishmen was alone decisive, could be answered in
a syllable: No! America would not fight. The President, Congress,
the press of both parties in the United States agreed only in this
particular. John Randolph’s speech on Gregg’s Resolution was reprinted
in London with a long preface by James Stephen, and proved conclusively
that America would submit. Merry came as near to a laugh as his gravity
would permit in expressing his contempt for the idea of war, and in
urging his Government to resent the Non-importation Act; and although
Fox probably thought poorly of Merry’s judgment, he could not but show
his despatches to the Cabinet if the Cabinet wished to read them. After
the slaughter of Pierce, when the Federalist newspapers in New York and
the irresponsible mob of seamen clamored for warlike measures, the only
effect of the outcry upon England was to stimulate the anti-American
prejudice and to embarrass the well-meant efforts of Fox, until his
chief newspaper, the “Morning Chronicle,” in a moment of irritation
plainly told the Americans that they were much mistaken if they thought
a war would be so very unpopular in England; and if they knew this,
they would not hector or bully so much. Even the powerful interests
directly engaged in trade with the United States made no attempt to
protect themselves; they did not see that the British nation was ready
and eager to cut its own throat in its desperate anxiety to save its
own life. The contest with France had made all Europe violent and
brutal; but England could boast that at the sound of British cannon the
chaos had become order, that the ocean had been divided from the land,
and as far as the ocean went, that her fleets made law. Two Powers only
remained to be considered by Great Britain,--Russia and the United
States. Napoleon showed an evident intention to take charge of the one;
England thought herself well able to give law to the other.
Against such public inclination toward measures of force Fox struggled
as he could, without united support even in the Cabinet. Men like
Lord Sidmouth were little inclined to risk the fate of the new
Administration by concessions to America; and the Tories, led by
Canning and Spencer Perceval, profited by every English prejudice in
order to recover their control of the government. Fox could carry
his point only by adopting half-measures. Instead of procuring a new
judicial decision or issuing an Order in Council, as had been done in
previous times, for replacing American commerce in its old privileges,
he caused Government to adopt a measure intended to produce the same
effect, but resting on a principle quite as objectionable to Americans
as the Rule of 1756 itself had ever been. May 16, 1806, the ministers
of neutral Powers were notified that the King had ordered a blockade
of the whole French and German coast from Brest to the river Elbe, but
that this blockade was to be strict and rigorous only between Ostend
and the Seine; while elsewhere neutral ships should not be liable to
seizure in entering or leaving the blockaded ports except under the
usual conditions which made them seizable in any case. Under this
blockade an American ship laden in New York with sugar, the product
of French or Spanish colonies, might sail in safety for Amsterdam or
Hamburg. Monroe wrote:[283] “It seems clearly to put an end to further
seizures on the principle which has been heretofore in contestation.”
English statutes, like English law, often showed peculiar ingenuity
in inventing _a posteriori_ methods of reaching their ends; but
no such device could be less satisfactory than that of inventing a
fictitious blockade in order to get rid of a commercial prohibition.
Interminable disputes arose in the course of the next few years in
regard to the objects and legality of this measure, which came to be
known as Fox’s blockade, and as such became a point of honor with
England; but its chief interest was its reflection of the English mind.
To correct a dangerous principle by setting an equally dangerous
precedent; to concede one point by implication, and in doing so to
assert another not less disputed; to admit a right by appearing to deny
it; and to encourage commerce under the pretence of forbidding it,--was
but admitting that the British government aimed at illegitimate
objects. America had always contested the legality of paper blockades
as emphatically as she had contested the Rule of 1756, and could no
more submit to the one than to the other, although in this case the
paper blockade was invented in order to conciliate and satisfy her. The
measure was intended for a temporary expedient pending negotiation;
yet such was the condition of England that Fox’s blockade became six
years afterward one of the chief pretexts under which the two countries
entered upon a war.
Another fortnight elapsed, but Monroe made no further progress.
Whenever he saw Fox the subjects in dispute were discussed; but
news arrived that the Non-importation Act had passed both Houses of
Congress, and the difficulty of obtaining favors was increased by the
attempt at compulsion. Fox showed less and less willingness to concede
principles, although he did not, as Monroe feared, declare that the
Act relieved him from any promises he might have made or from the
fulfilment of any hopes he might have held out. Thus the matter stood,
balanced almost equally between opposite chances, when, May 31, 1806,
news arrived from America that Monroe’s powers were superseded by the
appointment of a special mission, in which he was to be associated
with William Pinkney of Maryland.
The blow to Monroe’s pride was great, and shook his faith in the
friendship of Jefferson and Madison. Three years had elapsed since he
had himself been sent abroad to share Livingston’s negotiations, and
he had the best reason to know how easily the last comer could carry
away the prizes of popularity. The nomination of a colleague warned him
that he had lost influence at home, and that Jefferson, however well
disposed, no longer depended on him. This was in substance the truth;
but other and graver troubles were revealed in part to Monroe’s eyes
when William Pinkney arrived in London June 24, bringing with him the
new instructions which were to become the foundation of the treaty.
These instructions[284] began by treating the Non-importation Act as at
once a domestic and a foreign regulation, a pacific and a hostile act,
a measure with which England had no right to be angry, and one which
was calculated to anger her,--strictly amicable and at the same time
sharply coercive. After this preamble, in which the threat was clearer
than the explanation, followed an order precluding the possibility of
successful negotiation. Monroe was to begin by imposing an ultimatum.
The British government must expressly repudiate the right and forbid
the practice of impressment, or not only could no treaty be made, but
the Non-importation Act should be enforced. “So indispensable is some
adequate provision for the case that the President makes it a necessary
preliminary to any stipulation requiring a repeal of the Act shutting
the market of the United States against certain British manufactures.”
Besides this condition precedent, the instructions prescribed as
another ultimatum the restoration of the trade with enemies’ colonies
on its old foundation and indemnity for the captures made under Sir
William Scott’s late decisions. Three ultimata, therefore, were fixed
as conditions without which no treaty could receive the President’s
assent or procure a repeal of the Non-importation Act. The numerous
requests to be further made upon Fox concerned many different points
in dispute,--contraband, blockade, discriminating duties, immunity of
neutral waters, East and West Indian trade, and trade with Nova Scotia;
but these were matters of bargain, and the two negotiators might to
some extent use discretion in dealing with them. Yet every demand made
by the United States required a corresponding concession from England,
for which no equivalent could be offered by the American negotiators
except the repeal of the Non-importation Act.
Monroe knew that Jefferson had ever strongly opposed any commercial
treaty with Great Britain, and that he never spoke of Jay’s treaty
except with disgust and something like abhorrence. Again and again
Jefferson had said and written that he wished for no treaty; that he
preferred to rely on municipal legislation as his safeguard against
attack; and that he would not part with this weapon in order to obtain
the doubtful protection of an agreement which England could always
interpret to suit herself. Pinkney could add that Jefferson, as
every one in Washington was aware, had been unwillingly driven into
the present negotiation by the Senate, and that as the measure was
not his its success would hardly be within his expectation; that it
would embarrass his relations with Napoleon, endanger if not ruin the
simultaneous negotiation for Florida, and exalt Monroe, the candidate
of Randolph, at the expense of Madison, who was already staggering
under the attacks of his enemies.
Monroe was well informed of the efforts made to raise or to depress his
own fortunes at Washington, and could see how easily his rival, the
Secretary of State, might play a double part. Nothing could be simpler
than such tactics. Madison had only to impose on Monroe the task of
negotiating a treaty under impossible conditions. If the treaty should
fail, the blame would fall upon Monroe; if it should succeed, the
credit would be divided with Pinkney. No one could suppose that Madison
would make any great effort to secure the success of a negotiation when
success might make the negotiator the next President of the United
States.
Monroe could not doubt the President’s coldness toward the treaty; he
could not fail to see that the secretary’s personal wishes were rather
against than for it; and when he studied the instructions he could
not but admit that they were framed, if not with the intention, at all
events with the effect, of making a treaty impossible. No harder task
could well have been imposed than was laid upon Monroe. Not even when
he had been sent to Madrid in defiance of Talleyrand and Godoy, to
impose his own terms on two of the greatest Powers in the world, had
his chance of success been smaller than when his Government required
him to obtain from England, after the battle of Trafalgar, concessions
which England had steadily refused when she was supposed to be drawing
almost her last gasp. For a British ministry to abandon the Rule of
1756 was to challenge opposition; to throw open the colonial trade was
to invite defeat; but to surrender the so-called right of impressment
was to rush upon destruction. No minister that had ever ruled over the
House of Commons could at such a moment have made such a treaty without
losing his place or his head.
If America wanted such concessions she must fight for them, as other
nations had done ever since mankind existed. England, France, and Spain
had for centuries paid for their power with their blood, and could see
no sufficient reason why America should take their hard-won privileges
without a challenge. Jefferson thought otherwise. In his opinion, all
the three Powers would end by conceding American demands, not as a
matter of abstract right but for fear of throwing the United States
into the arms of an enemy. The instructions to Monroe rested on this
idea; and that no doubt might remain, Jefferson wrote to Monroe a
private letter which expressed the doctrine in set terms.
“No two countries upon earth,” said the President,[285] “ave
so many points of common interest and friendship; and their
rulers must be great bunglers indeed if with such dispositions
they break them asunder. The only rivalry that can arise is on
the ocean. England may by petty-larceny thwartings check us on
that element a little; but nothing she can do will retard us
there one year’s growth. We shall be supported there by other
nations, and thrown into their scale to make a part of the great
counterpoise to her navy. If, on the other hand, she is just
to us, conciliatory, and encourages the sentiment of family
feelings and conduct, it cannot fail to befriend the security of
both. We have the seamen and materials for fifty ships of the
line and half that number of frigates; and were France to give
us the money and England the dispositions to equip them, they
would give to England serious proofs of the stock from which
they are sprung and the school in which they have been taught,
and added to the efforts of the immensity of sea-coast lately
united under one Power would leave the state of the ocean no
longer problematical. Were, on the other hand, England to give
the money and France the dispositions to place us on the sea in
all our force, the whole world, out of the continent of Europe,
might be our joint monopoly. We wish for neither of these
scenes. We ask for peace and justice from all nations, and we
will remain uprightly neutral in fact.”
This was masterful not to say dictatorial language; for it came in
support of categorical claims which, however just, were vehemently
opposed by every conservative interest in England. The claims which
Monroe was to make as ultimata could not be conceded by England without
opening the door to claims more sweeping still. In the same breath with
which the President threatened England with fifty ships of the line
in case she would not abjure the right of impressment and the Rule of
1756, he added:--
“We begin to broach the idea that we consider the whole Gulf
Stream as of our waters, in which hostilities and cruising
are to be frowned on for the present, and prohibited as soon
as either consent or force will permit us. We shall never
permit another privateer to cruise within it, and shall forbid
our harbors to national cruisers. This is essential for our
tranquillity and commerce.”
These were bold words, but not well suited to Monroe’s task or likely
to encourage his hopes. President Jefferson was not only bent upon
forcing England to abandon by treaty the right of impressment and the
control of the colonial trade; he not only asked for liberal favors in
many different directions, which required the whole fabric of British
legislation to be reconstructed, without equivalent on the part of the
United States,--but he had also “begun to broach the idea” that he
should dictate where England’s line-of-battle ships might sail upon
the ocean. Monroe knew how such language would sound to English ears
strained to hear the distant thunders from Trafalgar, and how such
words would look to English eyes, dim with tears, as they watched their
hero borne through the shrouded streets of London to rest in his glory
beneath the dome of St. Paul’s. That England was inflated with her
triumphs, mad in her pretensions, intolerable in her arrogance, was
true. A people that had swept the ocean of enemies and held the winds
and waves for subjects could hardly fail to go mad with the drunkenness
of such stormy grandeur. The meanest beggar in England was glorified
with the faith that his march was o’er the mountain waves and his home
upon the deep; and his face would have purpled with rage at the idea
that Jefferson should dare to say that the squadrons of England must
back their topsails and silence their broadsides when they reached the
edge of the Gulf Stream.
With this picture before his eyes, Monroe could feel no great
confidence either in his own success or in the good faith of the
President’s instructions, which tied him to impossible conditions.
Nevertheless he accepted the task; and as he had gone to Spain with
the certainty of defeat and mortification, he remained in London to
challenge a hopeless contest. As though to destroy his only chance
of success, on the very day of Pinkney’s arrival Fox fell ill. His
complaint was soon known to be dropsical, and his recovery hopeless.
Two months passed, while the American envoys waited the result. Aug.
20, 1806, Fox, being still unable to do business, appointed Lord
Holland and Lord Auckland to carry on the negotiation in his place. No
better men could have been selected. Lord Holland especially, Fox’s
favorite nephew and the most liberal of all Whig noblemen, was warmly
disposed to make the negotiation a success; but much invaluable time
had been lost, and Napoleon was on the eve of Jena.
The negotiation began in earnest August 27, but proved to be long and
arduous. The two British commissioners, though courteous and friendly,
stood in constant fear of the charge that they had surrendered vital
English interests under American threats. They were especially
hampered by the Admiralty, the atmosphere of which, as Lord Holland
complained,[286] made those who breathed it shudder at anything like
concessions to the Americans; while the Treasury, though naturally
still less yielding, listened willingly to every expedient that offered
hope for the revenue. September 1 began the struggle over impressments;
and from the outset Monroe saw that the American claim had no chance
of success, while the case of the West Indian trade was almost equally
desperate. Only one serious discussion had taken place when the death
of Fox, September 13, produced a new delay of several weeks; and on
resuming the negotiation, Monroe and Pinkney were required to deal with
a new Foreign Secretary,--Charles Grey, Lord Howick,--to be better
known in English history as Earl Grey. Such a change boded no good
to the Americans. All Fox’s influence could not counteract the Tory
instincts of Parliament; and what Fox could not do when the Whigs were
strong could much less be done by Lord Howick when the Ministry was
every day tottering to its fall.
November 11 the American negotiators wrote home that they
had decided to disregard their instructions and to abandon
impressments,--accepting, instead of a formal article on the subject,
a note in which the British commissioners pledged their government
to exercise the strictest care not to impress American citizens, and
to afford prompt redress should injury be inflicted while impressing
British seamen. Having thus made up his mind to violate instructions
on the chief point of negotiation, Monroe found nothing to prevent
his doing so in other respects. His progress under William Pinkney’s
influence was rapid; his good nature, in the face of Lord Holland’s
difficult position, was extreme; and at the end of a few weeks, Dec.
31, 1806, Jefferson’s favorite diplomatic agent set his name to a
treaty which, taking its omissions and admissions together, surpassed
Jay’s treaty in outraging Jefferson’s prejudices and express desires.
That a people, like an individual, should for a time choose to accept
a wrong, like impressment or robbery, without forcible resistance
implied no necessary discredit. Every nation at one time or another had
submitted to treatment it disliked and to theories of international
law which it rejected. The United States might go on indefinitely
protesting against belligerent aggressions while submitting to them,
and no permanent evil need result. Yet a treaty was a compromise which
made precedent; it recorded rules of law which could not be again
discarded; and above all, it abandoned protest against wrong. This was
doubtless the reason why Jefferson wished for no treaties in the actual
state of the world; he was not ready to enforce his rights, and he was
not willing to compromise them.
The treaty signed by Monroe and Pinkney Dec. 1, 1806, was remarkable
for combining in one instrument every quality to which Jefferson held
most strenuous objections. The three ultimata were all abandoned;
impressments were set aside under a diplomatic memorandum which
rather recorded the right than restrained its exercise; no indemnity
was obtained for the ravages made on American commerce in 1805; and
in regard to the colonial trade, a compromise was invented which no
self-respecting government could admit. Article XI. of the treaty
imposed the condition that West Indian produce, coming from French or
Spanish colonies, and _bonâ fide_ the property of United States
citizens, might be exported from American ports to Europe on condition
that it should have paid to the United States custom-house a duty
of not less than two per cent _ad valorem_, which could not be
returned in drawback; while European merchandise might in the same way
be reexported from the United States to the West Indies, provided
it paid not less than one per cent _ad valorem_ in duties to
the American Treasury. This provision was only to be compared with
Article XII. of Jay’s treaty, in which Lord Grenville insisted and
Jay agreed that the United States should export no cotton. Even Pitt
had never proposed anything so offensive as the new restriction. He
had indeed required that the American merchant whose ship arrived at
Baltimore or Boston with a cargo of sugar or coffee from Cuba should
unload her, carry the hogsheads and cases into a warehouse, and pass
them through all the forms of the American custom-house; after which
he must turn about and stow them again on shipboard,--an operation
which was usually reckoned as equivalent, in breakage, pilfering, and
wages, to a charge of about ten per cent on the value of the cargo; but
he had not ventured to levy a duty upon them to be paid to the United
States government. One step more, and--as a clever London pamphleteer
suggested--the British government would require the American stevedores
to wear the King’s livery.[287] Had it been stipulated that the
custom-house payments should be taken as full proof of neutrality
and complete protection from seizure, the American merchant might
have found a motive for submitting to the tax; but the treaty further
insisted that both goods and vessel must be in good faith American
property,--a condition which left the door open as widely as ever
to the arbitrary seizures of British cruisers and to the equally
arbitrary decisions of admiralty courts.
“We flatter ourselves,” wrote Monroe and Pinkney to
Madison,[288] “that the sum agreed to be paid will not be felt
as a heavy one by our merchants, whose patriotism will be
gratified by the recollection that the duty which they pay will
redound to the advantage of their country.”
Mercantile patriotism was proverbially elastic; yet in the present
instance not so much the merchants’ gratification as that of the
President was to be considered,--and Jefferson’s patriotism could
hardly approve this tax for the protection of British shipping and
produce, which would on the one hand excite the anger of Napoleon,
while on the other it conferred advantages merely during the period of
war. Another objection existed which in Jefferson’s eyes was fatal.
He believed implicitly in the efficacy of commercial restrictions; he
thought the Non-importation Act a better guaranty of good treatment
than the best treaty ever made, and was quite ready to try the
experiment of such a measure against England. Yet Article V. of
Monroe’s treaty pledged him for ten years to abstain from every attempt
to discriminate against British commerce.
The smaller points conceded by Monroe and Pinkney were not less likely
than the greater ones to disturb Jefferson’s temper. The British
commissioners refused to remove the export duty of two and a half per
cent on British manufactures which Americans paid in excess of what
was paid by European consumers. Trade with the British East Indies was
restricted to ships which should sail directly from America and return
directly thither,--a provision less favorable than Jay had secured.
The trade with the British West Indies was a subject so delicate in
Parliament that the two Englishmen refused to touch it, saying that
any sanction of this trade, coupled with their sanction of the neutral
trade with French and Spanish colonies, would endanger the treaty. They
would enter into no arrangement of the trade with Nova Scotia, New
Brunswick, and Canada. They also refused to accept Madison’s ideas in
regard to blockades.
Bad as all this was, and contrary to Madison’s instructions and
Jefferson’s private letters, it was not yet the worst. After Monroe
had violated his orders,--had abandoned the ultimata and accepted
the commercial restrictions which the President disliked,--when the
four commissioners were about to sign the treaty, Monroe and Pinkney
were startled to hear that the two Englishmen meant to append an
explanatory note to their signatures. News of the Berlin Decree had
reached England, and its gravity was at once recognized. The British
negotiators formally notified Monroe and Pinkney that unless the
American government, before ratification, should give security that
it would not recognize the decree, his Majesty George III. would not
consider himself bound by the signatures of his commissioners.[289]
Signature under such a condition seemed rather the act of a suppliant
people than of one which had not yet so much as bought the sword it
should have used. Nevertheless Monroe signed.
Monroe was often called a very dull man. He was said to follow the
influence of those who stood near him, and was charged by different
and opposed politicians with having a genius for blunders; but either
Jefferson or Madison might be excused for suspecting that no man on
whom they implicitly relied could violate instructions, sacrifice the
principles of a lifetime, and throw infinite embarrassments on his
Government without some ulterior motive. They could not be blamed for
suspecting that Monroe, in signing his treaty, thought more of the
Federalist vote than he did of Madison’s political promotion.
Monroe afterward defended his treaty in writings more or less
elaborate, but his most candid account of his diplomacy in these years
was given in a letter to Colonel Taylor of Caroline, written in the
year 1810. Of the British treaty, he said:[290]--
“The failure of our business with Spain and the knowledge of
the renewal of the negotiation and the manner of it, which were
known to every one, were sensibly felt in our concerns with
England. She was not willing to yield any portion of what she
called her maritime rights, under the light pressure of the
non-importation law, to a Power which had no maritime force, not
even sufficient to protect any one of its ports against a small
squadron, and which had so recently submitted to great injuries
and indignities from Powers that had not a single ship at sea.
Under such circumstances, it seemed to me to be highly for the
interest of our country and to the credit of our government to
get out of the general scrape on the best terms we could, and
with that view to accommodate our differences with the great
maritime Power on what might be called fair and reasonable
conditions, if such could be obtained. I had been slighted,
as I thought, by the Administration in getting no answers to
my letters for an unusual term, and in being subjected to a
special mission, nothwithstanding my remonstrance against it on
a thorough conviction of its inutility, and by other acts which
I could not but feel; yet believing that my service in England
would be useful there, and by means thereof give aid to the
Administration and to the Republican cause at home, I resolved
to stay, and did stay for those purposes. The treaty was an
honorable and advantageous adjustment with England. I adopted
it in the firm belief that it was so, and nothing has since
occurred to change that opinion.”