CHAPTER XIII.
While Napoleon labored to reconstruct his system mutilated by American legislation, the Government of Great Britain sank lower and lower toward disappearance, while the star of Spencer Perceval shone alone with dull lustre on the British horizon. When the Portland ministry went to pieces in September, 1809, Perceval became of necessity master of the empire. Canning had quarrelled with him, and refused office except as prime minister. Castlereagh had been so lately disgraced that he could bring only weakness to the Government if he rejoined it. Both Castlereagh and Sidmouth refused to serve with Canning on any terms. The Whigs, represented by Lord Grenville and Lord Grey, were excluded by the King’s prejudices, by their own pledges to the Irish Catholics, and by the great preponderance of Tory opinion in the country. The Duke of Portland was dying; King George himself was on the verge of insanity, and every one supposed that the Prince of Wales, if he became regent, would at once appoint a ministry from among his Whig friends. This stalemate, where every piece on the chessboard stood in the way of its neighbor, and none could move while the King and Spencer Perceval remained, seemed likely to end in the destruction of the British empire. An economist wiser and better educated than Napoleon might easily have inferred, as he did, that with time England must succumb.
Perceval and his remaining friends—Liverpool, Bathurst, Eldon—looked about them for allies. They would not, indeed they could not, surrender the government to others, for no one offered to take it. In the House of Lords they were strong, but in the Commons they had no speaker except Perceval, while the opposition was strengthened by Canning, and Castlereagh could not be safely reckoned as more than neutral. They sought for allies both old and young in the Commons, but their search was almost fruitless. They could find only young Viscount Palmerston, about five-and-twenty years of age, who took the subordinate place of Secretary at War.
Nothing remained but to carry on the government by the Peers, with Perceval as its only important representative in the Commons. The Lord Hawkesbury of 1802, who had become Lord Liverpool at his father’s death, and was actually head of the Home Office, succeeded Castlereagh as head of the War Department. Spencer Perceval took the Duke of Portland’s place as first Lord of the Treasury, retaining his old functions as Chancellor of the Exchequer. These changes brought no new strength into the Cabinet; but Canning’s place at the Foreign Office remained to be filled, and common consent fixed upon one person as alone competent to bring with him to the position a weight of character that could overbalance the losses the Cabinet had suffered.
This person, hitherto unmentioned, was Richard Colley Wesley, or Wellesley, born in Ireland in 1760, eldest son of the first Earl of Mornington, whose younger son Arthur was born in 1769. Another brother, Henry, born in 1773, rose to high rank in diplomacy under the later title of Lord Cowley. In 1809 these three brothers were all actively employed in the public service; but the foremost of the three was the eldest, the Marquess Wellesley, whose reputation still overshadowed that of Arthur, then just called to the peerage Sept. 4, 1809, as Viscount Wellington of Talavera, in reward of his recent battle with Marshal Victor.
An Irish family neither wealthy nor very distinguished, the Wellesleys owed their success to their abilities. The second Lord Mornington, Marquess Wellesley, sprang into fame as a favorite of William Pitt, who showed his power by pushing young men like Richard Wesley and George Canning into positions of immense responsibility. Perhaps the favor shown to the former may in part have had its source in some resemblance of character which caused Pitt to feel a reflection of himself, for Mornington was a scholar and an orator. His Latin verses were an ornament of Eton scholarship; his oratory was classic like his verses; and his manners suited the scholarship of his poetry and the Latinity of his orations. Lord Mountmorris, one of his antagonists in the Irish Parliament of 1783, ridiculed his rhetoric: “If formidable spectres portending the downfall of the Constitution were to appear in this House, I admit that the noble Lord is frightened with becoming dignity. The ancient Roscius or the modern Garrick could not stand with a better grace at the appearance of a spectre.” The orator whose air of dignity Lord Mountmorris thought so studied was then twenty-three years old, and apparently never changed his manner. In the British Parliament, thirteen years afterward, Sheridan described him as presenting the same figure that Mountmorris laughed at. “Exactly two years ago,” said Sheridan in 1796, “I remember to have seen the noble Lord with the same sonorous voice, the same placid countenance, in the same attitude, leaning gracefully upon the table, and giving an account from shreds and patches of Brissot that the French republic would last but a few months longer.” The aristocratic affectations, if they were affectations, of Lord Mornington were conspicuous; but no man could safely laugh at one of the Wellesleys. In 1797 Mr. Pitt suddenly sent this ornament of the peerage to India as governor-general, and the world learned that since the time of Clive no surer or bolder hand had guided the empire of England in the East.
When he took charge of the Indian government, French influence contested his own at more than one court of the powerful native princes, while his resources were neither great nor easily concentrated. During the eight years of his sway he extirpated French influence; crushed the power of Tippoo Sultaun; conquered the empire of Mysore, which had again and again won victories over English armies within sight of Madras; broke up the Mahratta confederacy; and doubled the British territory in India, besides introducing or planning many important civil reforms. He shocked the Court of Directors by arbitrary rule, extravagance in finance, and favoritism toward his younger brothers; but success was the decisive answer to hostile criticism, and even fanatics could hardly affirm that a governor-general, though he might have every virtue, was fit for his place if he refused the services of Arthur Wellesley when they might be had for the asking.
When Lord Wellesley, created an Irish marquess and English baron, returned to England in 1806, he came home with the greatest name in the empire next to that of Pitt.[216] He was asked to join the Portland Administration, but declined. Canning was said to have taken offence at his refusal;[217] but at last in disgust with Perceval, Canning connected himself more closely than ever with the Marquess, doubtless in the hope of forcing Castlereagh out in order to bring Wellesley in.[218] At Canning’s request in April, 1809, the Marquess was appointed to the important and difficult post of Ambassador Extraordinary to the Supreme Junta of Spain, then at Seville; while at the same time his brother Arthur was made general-in-chief in the Peninsula. Lord Wellesley went to Spain with the understanding that he was soon to return and enter the Cabinet.[219] In October he learned that Canning had broken up the Cabinet, and that while Canning himself on one side expected the Wellesleys’ support, Perceval on the other was begging for it, and the Whigs were waiting with open arms to welcome their alliance. Canning’s duel took place Sept. 21, 1809. October 5 Spencer Perceval wrote to Wellesley at Seville, asking him to accept the Foreign Office; while at the same time Canning informed the King that Lord Wellesley would retire from office with himself.
In such a situation the most astute politician could not trust his own judgment. No one could say whether Wellesley’s strength would invigorate the Government, or whether Perceval’s weakness would exhaust Wellesley as it had exhausted Canning. Canning and Wellesley held the same estimate of Perceval. Canning had succeeded only in ruining himself by struggling to rid the Government of that incubus, as he regarded it, and Wellesley had no better right to expect success. On the other hand, if the Marquess should join the Government he might assist his brother Arthur, who needed support at home. Probably this idea turned the scale; at all events Wellesley accepted Perceval’s offer, and gave his Administration a chance of life.
Wellesley could have had no hope of effecting any considerable object except by carrying out Canning’s scheme, which required that Spencer Perceval should be forced from power before the Government could be placed on a strong foundation. His first experiences showed him the difficulties in his way.
December 6, 1809, the Marquess was sworn as Secretary of State. A few days afterward he appointed his brother Henry to the post he had himself vacated, of Envoy to the Spanish Junta at Seville. The favoritism was unfortunate, but Wellesley troubled himself little about odium; his single thought was to support his “brother Arthur,” while England was far from showing equal zeal in Arthur’s support. In spite of the success at Talavera, Lord Wellington had been obliged to retreat into Portugal; the Spanish army led by inferior generals ventured to march on Madrid, and November 19 was annihilated by the French at Ocaña, some fifty miles south of that city, leaving the whole south and east of Spain unprotected. The French were certain to reoccupy Seville if not to attack Cadiz. Affairs in the Peninsula were at least as unpromising as they had ever been, and Englishmen might be excused for doubting the policy of wasting British resources in fretting one extremity of Napoleon’s enormous bulk.
While the Wellesley interest concentrated on the Peninsula, the Foreign Office was interested in wider fields. The new secretary was expected to devise some system of trade with the Spanish-American colonies which should meet approval from the Junta, jealous with good reason of any foreign interference with Mexico and Peru; but above all he was required to take in hand the quarrel with the United States, and if possible to retrieve the mistakes of Canning. He had been only a few weeks in office when news arrived that President Madison refused to hold further relations with F. J. Jackson, the British minister, and that Madison and Jackson were only agreed in each requiring the punishment of the other. Pinkney soon appeared at the Foreign office with a request for Jackson’s recall.
Lord Wellesley was in character to the full as arbitrary as George Canning. Seven years of imperial power in India had trained him in habits of autocratic authority; but he was a man of breeding, courteous, dignified, and considerate of others’ dignity. In India he had shown what Canning thought himself to possess,—the hand of iron in the velvet glove. Without a tinge of Canning’s besetting vice, the passion to be clever, Wellesley never fell into the fault of putting sarcasms or epigrams into his state papers. So little offensive was he in manner, that although he brought about a war between England and the United States no American held him as an enemy, or retained so much ill-feeling toward him as to make even his name familiar to American ears. In truth his subordinate position in the Government prevented the exercise of his powers, and left him no opportunity to develop the force of that character which had crushed Tippoo Sultaun and tamed the Mahrattas. His colleagues allowed him to show only the weaknesses of a strong nature, which may have been increased to vices by the exhaustion of eight years’ severe labor in an Indian climate. What he might have done had he taken Perceval’s place no one can say; what he did or failed to do is more easily told.
When Pinkney came to explain the President’s action and wishes in regard to Jackson, Wellesley, in a manner that seemed to the American minister both frank and friendly, showed only the wish to conciliate. In a short time Pinkney became so intimate with the new Foreign Secretary as to excite comment. Nothing could be more encouraging than his reports to the President of the change in disposition which had come over the Foreign Office. Jan. 2, 1810, Pinkney, in a long note, explained to Wellesley the President’s reasons for breaking off relations with Jackson.[220] His tone was conciliatory, professing only the wish for friendly accommodation; and Wellesley on his side not only received the note without objection, but encouraged the hope that the President’s wishes would be gratified. Pinkney reported that in conversation Lord Wellesley had promised at once to send out a new envoy of diplomatic rank; to lose no time in settling the “Chesapeake” affair; and afterward to take up the commercial questions which had made the substance of Monroe’s treaty three years before. The cordiality of these promises satisfied Pinkney that they were not meant to deceive. If any one was deceived, the victim was not Pinkney but Wellesley himself, who overrated his own power and underrated the inert resistance of Spencer Perceval and the army of selfish interests at his back. Even Jackson’s affair was not easily managed. Jackson could not be disavowed, for he had done nothing more than his orders required him to do; nor could a new minister be appointed until the year elapsed which Canning promised for the term of Jackson’s mission. Between Canning on one side and Perceval on the other, Wellesley found himself unable to act, and resorted to delays.
Not until March 14 did Pinkney receive the promised reply[221] to his note of January 2; and this reply was not all that Wellesley had given him to expect. Compared with Canning’s notes, Wellesley’s letter might be called affectionate; but it was less definite than Pinkney would have liked. His Majesty, said Wellesley, regretted that the President should have interrupted communications before his Majesty could manifest his invariable disposition to maintain the relations of amity with the United States. Mr. Jackson had most positively assured his Government that it was not his purpose to give offence by anything he said or did; in such cases the usual course would have been to convey a formal complaint, which would have prevented the inconvenience of a suspension of relations. Yet his Majesty, always disposed to pay the utmost attention to the wishes and sentiments of States in amity with him, had directed the return of Mr. Jackson, though without marking his conduct with any expression of displeasure, inasmuch as Mr. Jackson’s “integrity, zeal, and ability have long been distinguished in his Majesty’s service,” and he seemed to have committed no intentional offence on the present occasion. Jackson was ordered to deliver his charge into the hands of a properly qualified person, while his Majesty “would receive, with sentiments of undiminished amity and good-will, any communication which the Government of the United States may deem beneficial to the mutual interests of both countries.”
This was but Canning once more, without the sarcasm. With his grand air of sultan and viceroy, Wellesley ignored the existence of complaints, and professed himself “ready to receive, with sentiments of undiminished amity and good-will, any communication which the Government of the United States may deem beneficial;” but when his course led, two years afterward, to the only communication which could logically result,—a declaration of war,—Wellesley declared in Parliament[222] “that a more unjust attack was never made upon the peace of any nation than that of the American government upon England;” and that “the American government had been long infected with a deadly hatred toward this country, and (if he might be allowed an unusual application of a word) with a deadly affection toward France.” He blamed only his own colleagues, who “ought in fact to have expected and been fully prepared for war with America.”
That the American government and people were infected with a deadly hatred toward England, if not already true, was becoming true with a rapidity which warranted Wellesley in taking it for fact, if he could do nothing to prevent it; but he should at least have explained the reasons why his colleagues, who in his opinion showed culpable neglect, failed to expect war or to prepare for it. In truth his colleagues had as little reason to expect war with America as he had to charge the American government with “deadly affection” toward France. They would do nothing to conciliate the United States because they had what seemed the best ground for thinking that the United States were already conciliated, and that the difficulties between America and France were such as to prevent America from quarrelling with England. Wellesley’s note was written March 14; Louis of Holland, March 16, signed the treaty obliging him to seize the American ships in his ports; Napoleon signed, March 23, the Rambouillet Decree. In every country within French control Napoleon was waging avowed war against the United States in retaliation for the Non-intercourse Act; while in America, March 31, Congress abandoned the idea of even a Navigation Act against England, and May 1 restored relations with her, without asking an equivalent or expressing unfriendly feeling. Under such circumstances, ministers more intelligent than Spencer Perceval were warranted in thinking that the part of wisdom was to leave American affairs alone.
The point was all-important in the story of the war. Governments rarely succeed in forethought, and their favorite rule is to do nothing where nothing need be done. Had the British government expected war, even Spencer Perceval would have bestirred himself to prevent it; but ministers neither expected nor had reason to expect hostilities. On the contrary, the only bright spot in Perceval’s horizon was the United States, where his influence seemed paramount. The triumph of Perceval’s policy there gave him strength at home to disregard Wellesley’s attempts at domination. An intelligent by-stander, through whom Lord Wellesley kept up relations with the Whigs, wrote, May 1, to the Marquess of Buckingham a letter,[223] which threw light on the ideas then influencing Wellesley:—
“The only hope Perceval can naturally have is in the turn which peace, or rather accommodation, with America may give the public mind; as also the successes in Spain against France which may be looked for. The former, in my opinion, as well from the devotion of Pinkney to Lord Wellesley as the late rapacious act of Bonaparte, may be looked on as certain.”
This letter, showing the certainty felt by all parties in American friendship, happened to be written on the day when the President signed the Act restoring commercial relations. After all that had occurred,—seizures, blockades, impressments, and Orders in Council; the “Chesapeake” affair, Rose’s mission, Canning’s letters, Erskine’s arrangement, and Jackson’s dismissal,—the British government counted its American policy as its chief success, and had the strongest reasons for doing so. American legislation was controlled by British influence, and Napoleon reasonably thought that neither robbery nor magnanimity would affect the result.
The Marquess of Buckingham’s friend gave him exact information, as the news a few weeks later, of the Act of May 1, proved; but evidence much more convincing of the confidence felt by ministers in the attitude of America was given by George Canning, who claimed the credit for having brought about that settlement which gave a new lease of life to the Perceval Administration. June 15, a week before Parliament rose, Canning spoke.[224]
“The recent proceedings of Congress,” he said, “have effected so much of what it was the anxious wish of the Government of which I was a member to attain, that I trust all our difficulties with America may be speedily adjusted. In truth I had never much doubt upon my mind that America, if left to her own policy and to the effect of those discussions which would take place in her own legislatures, general and provincial, would at no distant period arrive at that point at which, by the late Act of Congress, she appears to have arrived. No man is more anxious than I am for an amicable accommodation with that Power; but I trust at the same time that the change in the policy of the United States has not been effected by any improper concessions on our part,—a circumstance which I can fully disclaim during the period that I remained in office. I should rather hope that it has been the consequence of a determined adherence to that system which has been so often declaimed against in this House, but which has proved as clearly beneficial to the commercial interests as it has been consistent with the political dignity of this nation.”
While it was possibly true, or soon became true, that the United States were, as Wellesley afterward alleged, infected by a deadly hostility to England, neither Wellesley nor Canning, nor any other English statesman in the year 1810, suspected the strength of that passion, or dreamed of shaping a policy to meet the hatred which ought to have been constantly in their minds. Wellesley’s personal wishes were not easy to fathom, but they probably leaned, under Pinkney’s influence, toward conciliation. His actual measures showed a want of decision, or a degree of feebleness, unsuspected in his character.
Quite early in Wellesley’s career as Foreign Secretary, an opportunity occurred to test his energies. January 25, 1810,[225] Armstrong sent to Pinkney a copy of Napoleon’s offer to withdraw the Decree of Berlin, if England would withdraw her previous blockade of the coast from Elbe to Brest. Nothing could be easier for England. The blockade of May 16, 1806, had been invented by Charles James Fox at the beginning of his short Administration as an act of friendship toward the United States, in order to evade the application of Sir William Scott’s legal principles; it was strictly enforced only between Ostend and the Seine, a short strip of coast within the narrow seas completely under British control, and in part visible from British shores, while the subsequent Orders in Council had substituted a series of other measures in place of this temporary device, until at last the blockade of Holland and the Empire, from the river Ems to Trieste,—in which, April 26, 1809, the restrictive system of England was merged,—seemed to sweep away all trace of the narrower restraint. No one but Sir William Scott could say with certainty, as matter of law, whether Fox’s blockade was or was not in force; but for years past England had established a depot at Helgoland in the mouth of the Elbe, for no other purpose than to violate its own blockade by smuggling merchandise into Germany, Denmark, and Holland. From every point of view the continued existence of Fox’s blockade seemed impossible to suppose.
February 15 Pinkney wrote to Wellesley, asking whether that or any other blockade of France previous to January, 1807, was understood to be in force.[226] March 2 Wellesley replied that the restrictions imposed in May, 1806, “were afterward comprehended in the Order of Council of Jan. 7, 1807, which order is still in force.”[227] This reply encouraged Pinkney to infer that Fox’s blockade had merged in Howick’s Order in Council. March 7 he wrote again to the Marquess,[228]—
“I infer ... that the blockade ... is not itself in force, and that the restrictions which it established rest altogether, so far as such restrictions exist at this time, upon an Order or Orders in Council issued since the first day of January, 1807.”
To this easy question, which seemed hardly worth answering in the negative, Wellesley replied, March 26,[229]
“The blockade notified by Great Britain in May, 1806, has never been formally withdrawn. It cannot, therefore, be accurately stated that the restrictions which it established rest altogether on the Order of Council of Jan. 7, 1807; they are comprehended under the more extensive restrictions of that Order.”
This explanation, however satisfactory it might be to the admiralty lawyer who may have framed it, conveyed no clear idea to the diplomatic mind. The question whether the blockade of 1806 was or was not still in force remained obscure. Pinkney thought it not in force, and wrote to Armstrong,[230]—
“Certainly the inference is that the blockade of 1806 is virtually at an end, being merged and comprehended in an Order in Council issued after the date of the Edict of Berlin. I am, however, about to try to obtain a formal revocation of that blockade, and of that of Venice [July 27, 1806], or at least a precise declaration that they are not in force.”
His hopes were not strong, but he returned patiently to his task, and April 30 wrote a third letter to Lord Wellesley,[231] in which he recited Napoleon’s promise in full, and begged Wellesley to say “whether there exists any objection on the part of his Majesty’s government to a revocation, or to a declaration that they are no longer in force, of the blockades in question, especially that of May, 1806.”
Already Pinkney had waited nearly three months for a plain answer to a question which ought certainly to have received a satisfactory reply within a week. He was destined to wait longer; indeed, the United States waited two years for their answer before they declared war. The reason for this incomprehensible behavior, at a moment when America was thought to be friendly, cannot be fully explained; but evidence published in his brother’s papers seems to show that Marquess Wellesley favored giving up not only Fox’s blockade, but also the principle of commercial restrictions represented both in the Orders of November, 1807, and in the blockade of April, 1809. “He only agreed with his colleagues in the legality and propriety of the orders when first enacted. He contended that they had ceased to be applicable to the state of affairs; that they had become inexpedient with regard to England, and would certainly produce a war with America.”[232] That he insisted on this opinion in the Cabinet, or forced an issue with his colleagues on the point, is not to be supposed; but without doubt the treatment his opinions and authority received in the Cabinet was the cause of his strange conduct toward the American minister.
Pinkney’s last letter about Fox’s blockade was dated April 30. As early as April 25 every well-informed man in London knew that Wellesley was on bad terms with his colleagues. The Marquess of Buckingham’s correspondent had the news from Wellesley’s own mouth:[233]—
“Lord Wellesley complains that he has no weight whatever in Council; that there is nothing doing there which marks energy or activity; that the affairs of the country are quite at a standstill, and are likely to remain so; and that so little is his private interest in any of the departments, that since his accession to office he has not been able to make an exciseman.... Add to all this that he hates, despises, and is out of friendship or even intimacy with every one of his colleagues at this moment.”[234]
Two years afterward the Marquess repeated the same story in public:[235]—
“Lord Wellesley,” he declared, speaking in the third person, “had repeatedly, with great reluctance, yielded his opinions to the Cabinet on many other important points [besides the war in the Peninsula]. He was sincerely convinced by experience that in every such instance he had submitted to opinions more incorrect than his own, and had sacrificed to the object of accommodation and temporary harmony more than he could justify in point of strict public duty. In fact he was convinced by experience that the Cabinet neither possessed ability nor knowledge to devise a good plan, nor temper and discernment to adopt what he now thought necessary, unless Mr. Perceval should concur with Lord Wellesley. To Mr. Perceval’s judgment or attainments Lord Wellesley, under the same experience, could not pay any deference without injury to the public service.”
Probably Wellesley did not conceal in Council the opinion of his colleagues which he freely expressed in society. In every way they annoyed him. A scholar, who prided himself on his classical studies and refined tastes, he found these colleagues altering his state papers and criticising his style. “He had thought he was among a Cabinet of statesmen,” he said; “he found them a set of critics.” His own criticisms occasionally touched matters more delicate than style. Once at a Cabinet meeting Lord Westmoreland, the Privy Seal, put his feet on the table while Wellesley was talking. The Foreign Secretary stopped short. “I will go on with my remarks,” he said, “when the noble Lord resumes a more seemly attitude.”
Americans could hardly be blamed for holding a low opinion of this Administration, when most intelligent Englishmen held the same. If Whigs or Liberals like Grenville, Brougham, and Sydney Smith were prejudiced critics, this charge could hardly be brought against Canning; but if Canning’s opinion were set aside, the Wellesleys at least being identified with his administration had every reason to wish Perceval success. How the Marquess hated and despised Perceval; how he struggled to get rid of him, and strained every nerve to bring Canning, Castlereagh, Sidmouth, Grey, or Grenville into the Government as a counter-balancing influence, can be read in the biographies of all these men, and of many less famous. London echoed with the Marquess’s deep disgust; every man of fair parts in England sympathized with it, unless his personal interests or feelings bound him to blind devotion. The yoke hung heavy on Whigs and Tories alike. Even Lord Sidmouth rebelled against the commercial system to which Perceval clung more desperately than to his offices or power. “Of that destructive system,” wrote Sidmouth in the summer of 1810,[236] “all are weary, ‘praeter atrocem animum Catonis.’”
Even Henry Wellesley, at Seville and Cadiz, felt the same heavy-hand deadening the effect of every effort, and longed to do at Cadiz what Erskine had done at Washington. March 4, 1810,[237] Perceval wrote to Lord Wellesley begging him to instruct his brother Henry to obtain from the Spanish Junta exclusive or at least special privileges in the trade of the Spanish colonies, such as would admit British consuls to the chief places of South America, and “give us a decided benefit and preference in the trade.” Of course this preference was to be granted at the expense of the United States, the solitary rival of England in those waters, but “as nearly hostile to Spain as she can be without actually declaring war against her.” Soon afterward the “Espagnol,” a Spanish periodical published in England, applauded revolutionary movements in Caracas and Buenos Ayres, while it asserted the impossibility of preventing the spread of the spirit of independence in the Spanish-American colonies.
“You can have no idea,” wrote Henry Wellesley from Cadiz, August 31, to his brother Arthur,[238] “of the ferment occasioned here by this article, which is attributed to the Government,—as it is supposed, and I believe justly, that the ‘Espagnol’ is patronized by the Government, and contains its sentiments with regard to the occurrences in Spain and the measures necessary in the present crisis of her affairs.... It is wonderful that they cannot be satisfied in England with a commercial arrangement which would be attended with immense advantages to ourselves, and would likewise be greatly beneficial to Spain. I apprehend this to be the true spirit of all commercial treaties; and why are we to take advantage of the weakness of Spain to endeavor to impose terms upon her which would be ruinous and disgraceful? I have it in my power to conclude to-morrow a commercial treaty which, without breaking in upon the Spanish colonial laws, would pour millions into the pockets of our merchants, and be equally advantageous to the resources; but this will not do, and we must either have the trade direct with the colonies, or nothing. However, I have received my answer, and the Government will not hear of opening the trade.”
The coincidence of opinion about Spencer Perceval extended everywhere, except among the Church of England clergy, the country squires, the shipping interests, the Royal household at Windsor, and the Federalists of Boston and Connecticut. As though to make him an object of execration, the long-threatened storm burst on the trade and private credit of Great Britain. For some eighteen months gold stood at a premium of about fifteen per cent; the exchanges remained steadily unfavorable, while credit was strained to the utmost, until in July, 1810, half the traders in England, and private banks by the score, were forced to suspend payment. Never before, and probably never since, has England known such a fall in prices and destruction of credit.[239]
This was the impending situation when Parliament adjourned, June 21, with no bright spot on its horizon but the supposed friendship of America. Meanwhile Pinkney wearied Wellesley for an answer to the question whether Fox’s blockade was in force. June 10, June 23, and finally August 6, he renewed his formal request. “No importunity had before been spared which it became me to use.”[240] He was met by the same torpor at every other point. Wellesley promised to name a new minister to Washington, but decided upon none. He invited overtures in regard to the “Chesapeake” affair, but failed to act on them. Rumor said that he neglected business, came rarely to Cabinet meetings, shut himself in his own house, saw only a few friends, and abandoned the attempt to enforce his views. He resolved to retire from the Cabinet, in despair of doing good, and waited only for the month before the next meeting of Parliament, which he conceived to be the most proper time for declaring his intention.[241]
In the midst of this chaos, such as England had rarely seen, fell Cadore’s announcement of August 5 that the Imperial Decrees were withdrawn, bien entendu that before November 1 England should have abandoned her blockades, or America should have enforced her rights. Pinkney hastened to lay this information before Lord Wellesley, August 25, and received the usual friendly promises, which had ceased to gratify him. “I am truly disgusted with this,” he wrote home, August 29,[242] “and would, if I followed my own inclination, speedily put an end to it.” Two days afterward he received from Wellesley a civil note,[243] saying that whenever the repeal of the French Decrees should actually have taken effect, and the commerce of neutral nations should have been restored to the condition in which it previously stood, the system of counteraction adopted by England should be abandoned. This reply, being merely another form of silence, irritated Pinkney still more, while his instructions pressed him to act. He waited until September 21, when he addressed to Wellesley a keen remonstrance. “If I had been so fortunate,” he began,[244] “as to obtain for my hitherto unanswered inquiry the notice which I had flattered myself it might receive, and to which I certainly thought it was recommended by the plainest considerations of policy and justice, it would not perhaps have been necessary for me to trouble your Lordship with this letter;” and in this tone he went on to protest against the “unwarrantable prohibitions of intercourse rather than regular blockades,” which had helped in nearly obliterating “every trace of the public law of the world”:—
“Your Lordship has informed me in a recent note that it is ‘his Majesty’s earnest desire to see the commerce of the world restored to that freedom which is necessary for its prosperity;’ and I cannot suppose that this freedom is understood to be consistent with vast constructive blockades which may be so expanded at pleasure as, without the aid of any new device, to oppress and annihilate every trade but that which England thinks fit to license. It is not, I am sure, to such freedom that your Lordship can be thought to allude.”
The Marquess of Buckingham’s well-advised correspondent some weeks afterward[245] remarked that “Pinkney, who was at first all sweetness and complaisance, has recently exhibited in his communications with Lord Wellesley an ample measure of republican insolence.” Sweetness and insolence were equally thrown away. Pinkney’s letter of September 21, like most of his other letters, remained unanswered; and before November 1, when Napoleon’s term for England’s action expired, a new turn of affairs made answer impossible. The old King was allowed to visit the death-bed of his favorite daughter the Princess Amelia; he excited himself over her wishes and farewells, and October 25 his mind, long failing, gave way for the last time. His insanity could not be disguised, and the Government fell at once into confusion.