CHAPTER I.
Rarely had a great nation approached nearer than England to ruin without showing consciousness of danger. Napoleon’s boast to his Chamber of Commerce, that within ten years he would subject his rival, was not ill-founded. The conquest of Russia, which Napoleon meant to make certain, combined with a war between the United States and Great Britain, coming immediately upon the destruction of private credit and enterprise in 1810, could hardly fail to shake the British empire to its foundation; and perhaps the worst sign of danger was the absence of popular alarm. The intelligence of all England with feelings equally strong, whether mute or vociferous, was united in contempt for the stolid incompetence of the Tory faction beyond anything known in England since the Stuarts; but both Houses of Parliament, as well as the Crown, were conscious of needing no better representatives than Perceval and Eldon, and convulsions that shook the world never stirred the composure of these men. The capital and credit on which England’s power rested were swept away; the poorer classes were thrown out of employment; the price of wheat,[1] which averaged in 1807 seventy-eight shillings per quarter of eight bushels, in 1808 eighty-five shillings, and in 1809 one hundred and six shillings, in 1810 rose to one hundred and twelve shillings, or about three dollars and a half a bushel, and remained at or above this rate until the autumn of 1813; while abroad, the Spanish peninsula was subdued by Napoleon, whose armies occupied every part of Spain and Portugal except Cadiz and Lisbon. Sweden, the last neutral in Europe, elected a French general of Bonaparte’s family as king, and immediately afterward declared war on England; and the United States closed their ports to British commerce, and menaced a declaration of war. The exports of Great Britain fell off one third in the year 1811. The sources of England’s strength showed exhaustion.
Neither these arguments nor even the supreme argument of war shook the steadfast mind of Spencer Perceval. Responsibilities that might have driven him to insanity took the form of religious duties; and with the support of religious or patriotic formulas statesmen could sleep in peace amidst the wreck of nations. After the insanity of King George was admitted, at the beginning of November, 1810, Spencer Perceval became for a time the King of England, but a king without title. The Prince of Wales, the future regent, was obliged to wait for an Act of Parliament authorizing him to assume power. The Prince of Wales had all his life detested the Tory influence that surrounded the throne, and had associated with Whigs and liberals, like Sheridan and Fox. Perceval expected to retire; the prince could not yet take control, and this dead-lock put a stop to serious government. Nothing but business of routine could be undertaken.
If the United States could wait till spring, their friends were likely to be once more in power, or the Tory influence would be so far shaken that the danger of war might pass. For this possible revolution both Madison and Pinkney twelve months before would have waited with confidence and pleasure; but repeated disappointments had convinced them that their patience was useless. Pinkney had asked and received instructions to require a decision or to quit England. When November arrived, the day on which Napoleon’s Decrees stood revoked according to the Duc de Cadore, Pinkney acted in London on his own responsibility, as Madison acted at Washington, and sent to Lord Wellesley a note, dated November 3, asking for an immediate repeal of the British Orders in Council, on the ground that Napoleon’s revocation had taken effect. “That it has taken effect cannot be doubted,” he said;[2] but he offered no evidence to support his assertion. He also assumed that England was bound to withdraw Fox’s blockade of the French coast from Brest to the Elbe, as well as Spencer Perceval’s subsequent measures which were called into existence by Napoleon’s Continental system, and were to cease with it. Both these demands were made without instructions founded on the knowledge of Cadore’s letter.
At that moment Lord Wellesley was full of hope that at last he should remove Spencer Perceval from his path. Every one supposed, and had good ground for believing, that the Prince of Wales would at once form a new Government, with Wellesley and the Whigs for its support. At such a crisis Wellesley could not expect or indeed wish to effect a partial and sudden change of foreign policy. He waited a month before taking official notice of Pinkney’s letter, and when he replied,[3] December 4, said only that “after the most accurate inquiry” he had been unable to obtain any authentic intelligence of the French repeal, and begged the American minister to furnish whatever information he possessed on the subject.
The American minister possessed no information on the subject, but he received, December 11, news of the President’s proclamation founded on the French repeal, and was the more decided to insist on his ground. Finding that conversations produced no effect, Pinkney took his pen once more,—and then began another of the diplomatic duels which had occurred so often in the course of the last six years; but for the first time the American champion with weak arguments and indifferent temper used the kind of logic likely to produce conviction in the end.
Pinkney maintained that the French Decrees were revoked and that Fox’s blockade was illegal. Neither position was beyond attack. The American doctrine of blockade was by no means clear. The British government never attempted to defend its sweeping Orders of 1807 and 1809 on the ground of legality; these were admittedly illegal, and a proper casus belli if America chose to make war on their account. England claimed only that the United States were bound to make war on France for the Berlin Decree of Nov. 21, 1806, before making war on England for her retaliatory Orders of 1807. In order to evade this difficulty, France declared that her Decree of November, 1806, was retaliatory on Fox’s blockade of May, 1806. America began by maintaining that as far as concerned neutral commerce both belligerents used retaliation for illegitimate objects, and that the United States might rightfully declare war against either or both. The position was easily understood, and had the advantage of being historically true; but the United States stood on less certain ground when they were drawn into discussion of the legal theory involved in Fox’s blockade.
England held[4] that Fox’s blockade of May, 1806, covering the French coast from the Elbe to Brest, was a lawful blockade, supported by a particular naval force detached for that special purpose and sufficient for its object, until the blockade itself was merged in the avowedly extra-legal paper-blockades of 1809; and that if the paper-blockades were withdrawn, Great Britain had the right to re-establish Fox’s blockade with an efficient naval force to execute it.
President Madison held a different opinion. He insisted,[5] and ordered Pinkney to insist, that a particular port must be invested by a particular naval force; and that Great Britain ought not to contend that her naval force was adequate to blockade a coast a thousand miles long. On this ground the President, July 5, 1810,[6] instructed Pinkney to require the annulment of Fox’s blockade as “palpably at variance with the law of nations.” In order to prove the impartiality of this demand, the President promised to insist that the repeal required from France as its counterpart should “embrace every part of the French Decrees which violate the neutral rights guaranteed to us by the law of nations.”
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.
“If nothing more had been required from Great Britain than the repeal of our Orders in Council,” he said, “I should not have hesitated to declare the perfect readiness of this Government to fulfil that condition. On these terms the Government has always been sincerely disposed to repeal the Orders in Council. It appears, however, not only by the letter of the French minister, but by your explanation, that the repeal of the Orders in Council will not satisfy either the French or the American government. The British government is further required by the letter of the French minister to renounce those principles of blockade which the French government alleges to be new.... On the part of the American government, I understand you to require that Great Britain shall revoke her Order of Blockade of May, 1806.”
Wellesley declined to entertain this demand. He appealed to the justice of America not to force an issue on such ground, and he protested that the Government retained an anxious solicitude to revoke the Orders in Council as soon as the Berlin and Milan Decrees should be effectually repealed, without conditions injurious to the maritime rights of Great Britain.
To this declaration Pinkney replied, Jan. 14, 1811, in a letter[10] defending his own position and attacking the good faith of the British government. He began by defending the temper of his late remonstrances:—
“It would not have been very surprising nor very culpable, perhaps, if I had wholly forgotten to address myself to a spirit of conciliation which had met the most equitable claims with steady and unceasing repulsion; which had yielded nothing that could be denied, and had answered complaints of injury by multiplying their causes. With this forgetfulness, however, I am not chargeable; for against all the discouragements suggested by the past, I have acted still upon a presumption that the disposition to conciliate, so often professed, would finally be proved by some better evidence than a perseverance in oppressive novelties, as obviously incompatible with such a disposition in those who enforce them as in those whose patience they continue to exercise.”
America, continued Pinkney, was not a party, either openly or covertly, to the French requisition. “What I have to request of your Lordship is that you will take our views and principles from our own mouths.” The rejoinder was not so convincing as it would have been had Pinkney wholly discarded French views; but on the point of Fox’s blockade, the American and the French demand was the same. Pinkney was obliged to show that the two identical conditions rested on different grounds. At some length he laid down the law as the United States understood it.
“It is by no means clear,” he began, “that it may not be fairly contended, on principle and early usage, that a maritime blockade is incomplete with regard to States at peace unless the place which it would affect is invested by land as well as by sea. The United States, however, have called for the recognition of no such rule. They appear to have contented themselves with urging in substance that ports not actually blockaded by a present, adequate, stationary force employed by the Power which attacks them shall not be considered as shut to neutral trade in articles not contraband of war; ... that a vessel cleared or bound to a blockaded port shall not be considered as violating in any manner the blockade unless on her approach to such port she shall have been previously warned not to enter it; ... that whole coasts and countries shall not be declared (for they can never be more than declared) to be in a state of blockade; ... and lastly, that every blockade shall be impartial in its operation.”
On these definitions of law, and not to satisfy Napoleon’s requirement, the President insisted on the abandonment of Fox’s blockade.
The withdrawal of the Orders in Council, on the other hand, was required on the ground that England had pledged her faith to withdraw them whenever France revoked her decrees. France had revoked her decrees, and England could not honorably refuse to withdraw the orders.
“As to the Orders in Council which professed to be a reluctant departure from all ordinary rules, and to be justified only as a system of retaliation for a pre-existing measure of France, their foundation, such as it was, is gone the moment that measure is no longer in operation. But the Berlin Decree is repealed, and even the Milan Decree, the successor of your Orders in Council, is repealed also. Why is it, then, that your orders have outlived those edicts?”
In both instances the American position lost character by connection with Napoleon’s acts. Pinkney repudiated such a connection in the first case, and his argument would have been stronger could he have repudiated it in the second. Unable or unwilling to do this, he had no resource but to lose his temper, which he did with proper self-control. The correctness of his reasoning or of his facts became less important from the moment he showed himself in earnest; for then the controversy entered a new phase.
In making an issue of war, President Madison needed to exercise extreme caution not to shock the sentiment of New England, but he needed to observe no such delicacy in regard to the feelings of the British Tories. In respect to the British government, the nature of the issue mattered little, provided an issue were made; and Pinkney might reasonably think that the more paradoxical his arguments the more impression they would produce. Centuries of study at Oxford and Edinburgh, and generations devoted to the logic or rhetoric of Aristotle, Cicero, and Quintilian, had left the most educated classes of Great Britain still in the stage of culture where reasoning, in order to convince, must cease to be reasonable. As Pinkney became positive and arrogant, Wellesley became conciliatory and almost yielding. The American note of January 14, written in a tone that had not hitherto been taken in London, was coupled with a notice that brought the two governments in presence of the long-threatened rupture. Pinkney informed Lord Wellesley that as the British government, after a lapse of many months, had taken no steps to carry out the assurance of sending a new minister to Washington, the United States government could not retain a minister at London. Therewith Pinkney requested an audience of leave.
Although Wellesley had never avowed a political motive for his systematic delays, no one could doubt that he intentionally postponed not only concession on the Orders in Council, but also a settlement of the “Chesapeake” affair and the appointment of a new minister at Washington, because his colleagues, as he hinted[11] to Pinkney, were persuaded “that the British interest in America would be completely destroyed by sending thither at this time a minister plenipotentiary,” and of course by any other frank advance. The influence of F. J. Jackson with the Government was perhaps strong enough to check action that would have amounted to a censure on his own conduct; and although the American elections showed that Jackson had for the time so much reduced British influence in America as to make some change of policy necessary if it were to be revived, Jackson, in daily intercourse with the Foreign Office and with ministers, was exerting every effort to maintain his credit. Nothing less than Pinkney’s request for an audience of leave was likely to end these ministerial hesitations.
For the moment, as Pinkney knew, his request could not be granted, because the King was insane and could give audience to no one. Since Nov. 1, 1810, Parliament had done no other business than such as related to the regency; yet on Jan. 14, 1811, when Pinkney’s two notes were written, the Regency Bill had not been brought before the Commons. Introduced on the following day, Parliament showed extraordinary energy by making it law in little more than a fortnight; yet the Prince Regent, who took the oaths February 6, still required time to settle his government.
Everything depended on the Prince Regent’s action. Had he followed the expected course,—had he dismissed Spencer Perceval, and put himself in the hands of Wellesley, Grenville, Grey, and Holland,—the danger of an American war might possibly have vanished. The Orders in Council might have been withdrawn, the “Chesapeake” affair might have been settled, a friendly minister would have been sent to Washington, and the war party in the Twelfth Congress would have been thrown into a minority. After much manœuvring, the Prince of Wales at last avowed his decision. February 4 he wrote to Spencer Perceval, announcing the wish, wholly in deference to the King’s feelings, that the late ministers should remain in charge of the government. The Whigs were once more prostrated by this desertion, and the Marquess Wellesley abandoned his last hope of saving the government from Perceval’s control.
The effect of the Prince Regent’s course was instantly felt. His letter to Perceval was written February 4; he assumed the royal office February 6; and February 11 Wellesley was able to answer[12] Pinkney’s note on blockades.
“France requires,” said he, “that Great Britain shall not only repeal the Orders in Council, but renounce those principles of blockade which are alleged in the same letter to be new,—an allegation which must be understood to refer to the introductory part of the Berlin Decree. If Great Britain shall not submit to those terms, it is plainly intimated in the same letter that France requires America to enforce them. To these conditions his Royal Highness, on behalf of his Majesty, cannot accede. No principles of blockade have been promulgated or acted upon by Great Britain previously to the Berlin Decree which are not strictly conformable to the rights of civilized war and to the approved usages and laws of nations.... I am commanded to inform you that his Royal Highness cannot consent to blend the question which has arisen upon the Orders in Council with any discussion of the general principles of blockade.”
In a note of two lines, Pinkney replied[13] that he had no inducement to trouble his Lordship further on the subject. The same day he received a notice that the Prince Regent would hold his first diplomatic levee February 19; but instead of accepting the invitation, Pinkney wrote with the same brevity to ask at what time the Prince Regent would do him the honor to give his audience of leave.[14]
This abrupt course brought the Government partially to reason. Within forty-eight hours Wellesley wrote to Pinkney a private letter[15] of apology for the delay in appointing a minister to Washington, and of regret that this delay should have been misunderstood; he announced that Augustus J. Foster, late British minister in Sweden, would be immediately gazetted as minister to the United States; and his letter closed by a remark which came as near deprecation as Pinkney’s temper would allow: “You will, of course, exercise your own judgment, under these circumstances, respecting the propriety of requiring an audience of leave on the grounds which you have stated.” With this private letter, Lord Wellesley sent an official notice that the Prince Regent would receive Mr. Pinkney February 19, by his desire, for an audience of leave.
The responsibility thus thrown upon Pinkney was more serious than had ever before, or has ever since, fallen to the share of a minister of the United States in England. The policy of withdrawing the United States minister from London might be doubted, not so much because it was violent, as because it was likely to embarrass the President more than it embarrassed England. If the President was indeed bent on war, and wished to hasten its declaration, the recall of his minister in London might be proper; but if he still expected to negotiate, London was the spot where he needed to keep his strongest diplomatist, and, if possible, more than one. Yet the worst possible mistake was to recede once more,—to repeat the comedy of American errors, and to let the British government assume that its policy was still safe.
Pinkney hesitated, and consulted his instructions.[16] These were dated Nov. 15, 1810, and ordered Pinkney, in case no successor to F. J. Jackson should then have been appointed, to take leave of absence, entrusting the legation to a chargé d’affaires; but this positive order was practically revoked in the concluding sentence: “Considering the season at which this instruction may have its effect, and the possibility of a satisfactory change in the posture of our relations with Great Britain, the time of your return to the United States is left to your discretion and convenience.”
These instructions did not warrant Pinkney in demanding leave of absence on any other ground than that of failure to appoint a minister at Washington. They did not warrant him in returning to America at all if he saw the possibility of such an appointment. Pinkney was obliged to put a free construction on the President’s language. Abandoning the ground that his departure was a necessary result of the absence of a British minister at Washington, he asked Lord Wellesley, in an official note, dated February 17, what Mr. Foster was to do when he arrived there?[17] “I presume that for the restoration of harmony between the two countries, the Orders in Council will be relinquished without delay; that the blockade of 1806 will be annulled; that the case of the ‘Chesapeake’ will be arranged in the manner heretofore intended; and in general that all such just and reasonable acts will be done as are necessary to make us friends.” So important a letter was probably never written by any other American diplomatist without instructions from his Government,—for it was in effect an ultimatum, preliminary to the rupture of relations and ultimate war; yet even in this final list of American demands made by the American minister in withdrawing from London, impressment was not expressly mentioned.
Wellesley replied in a private letter[18] dated February 23, with the formal avowal that “it would be neither candid toward you, nor just toward this Government, to countenance any interpretation which might favor a supposition that it was intended by this Government to relinquish any of the principles which I have so often endeavored to explain to you.” Nothing in Wellesley’s letter showed a desire to irritate, and his refusals left less sting than was left by Canning’s concessions; but the issue was fairly joined, and America was at liberty to act upon it as she pleased.
In order to leave no doubt of his meaning, Pinkney instantly[19] claimed his audience of leave for February 28, declining, in the mean time, to attend the diplomatic levee which by postponement took place only February 26. His conduct was noticed and understood, as he meant it should be; and as his audience still remains the only occasion when an American minister at London has broken relations in a hostile manner, with resulting war, it has an interest peculiar to itself. Several accounts were preserved of what passed at the interview. Pinkney’s official report recorded the words used by him:[20]—
“I stated to the Prince Regent the grounds upon which it had become my duty to take my leave and to commit the business of the legation to a chargé d’affaires; and I concluded by expressing my regret that my humble efforts in the execution of the instructions of my Government to set to rights the embarrassed and disjointed relations of the two countries had wholly failed; and that I saw no reason to expect that the great work of their reconciliation was likely to be accomplished through any other agency.”
According to Pinkney, and according to the official report of Lord Wellesley,[21] the Prince Regent replied in terms of the utmost amity toward the United States. Another account of the interview gave the impression that the Prince Regent had not shown himself so gracious toward the departing minister as the official reports implied. Francis James Jackson, who dogged Pinkney’s footsteps with the personal malevolence he had almost a right to feel, and who haunted the Court and Foreign Office in the hope of obtaining—what he never received—some public mark of approval, wrote to Timothy Pickering a long letter on Pinkney’s departure:[22]—
“It has occasioned much surprise here that exactly at the moment of Pinkney’s demand being complied with he should nevertheless take what he calls an inamicable leave.... It was not expected that he would depart so far from his usual urbanity as to decline the invitation that was sent him in common with the rest of the foreign ministers to attend the Regent’s levee. It was not probable after this that the audience of leave which he claimed should answer his expectation. It was very short. Mr. Pinkney was told that the Regent was desirous of cultivating a good understanding with the United States; that he had given a proof of it in the appointment of a minister as soon as his acceptance of the Regency enabled him to appoint one; that the Orders in Council would have been repealed, but that his Royal Highness never could or would surrender the maritime rights of his country. Mr. Pinkney then made some profession of his personal sentiments, to which he was answered: ‘Sir, I cannot look into men’s minds; I can only judge of men’s motives by their conduct.’ And then the audience ended.”
So closed Pinkney’s residence in London. He had passed there nearly five years of such violent national hostility as no other American minister ever faced during an equal length of time, or defied at last with equal sternness; but his extraordinary abilities and character made him greatly respected and admired while he stayed, and silenced remonstrance when he left. For many years afterward, his successors were mortified by comparisons between his table-oratory and theirs. As a writer he was not less distinguished. Canning’s impenetrable self-confidence met in him powers that did not yield, even in self-confidence, to his own; and Lord Wellesley’s oriental dignity was not a little ruffled by Pinkney’s handling. As occasion required, he was patient under irritation that seemed intolerable, as aggressive as Canning himself, or as stately and urbane as Wellesley; and even when he lost his temper, he did so in cold blood, because he saw no other way to break through the obstacles put in his path. America never sent an abler representative to the Court of London.
Pinkney sailed from England a few weeks afterward, leaving in charge of the legation John Spear Smith, a son of Senator Samuel Smith, who had been for a time attached to the Legation at St. Petersburg; had thence travelled to Vienna and Paris, where he received Pinkney’s summons to London,—the most difficult and important diplomatic post in the world. Simultaneously, Lord Wellesley hurried Foster to the United States. The new British minister was personally acceptable. By birth a son of the actual Duchess of Devonshire by her first husband, he had the advantage of social and political backing, while he was already familiar with America, where he had served as Secretary of Legation. Just dismissed from Sweden by Bernadotte’s election and the declaration of war against England which followed it, Foster would hardly have sought or taken the mission to Washington had not Europe been closed to English diplomacy. Even F. J. Jackson, who spoke kindly of few people, gave a pleasant account of his successor.[23] “Foster is a very gentlemanlike young man, quite equal to do nothing at his post, which is now the best possible policy to follow;” but in the same breath, “that most clumsy and ill-conditioned minister,” as Pinkney described Jackson,[24] added that the police office was the proper place to train officials for service at Washington. “One of the best magistrates as minister, and a good sharp thief-taker for secretary, would put us in all respects much upon a level with their Yankeeships.” The phrase implied that Jackson felt his own career at Washington to have been mortifying, and that he had not been on a level with his opponents. Possibly the sense of mortification hurried the decline which ended in his death, three years afterward, in the midst of the war he did so much to cause.
Wellesley’s instructions to Foster were dated April 10,[25] and marked another slight step toward concession. Once more he discussed the Orders in Council, but on the ground taken by Pinkney could come to no other conclusion than that the President was mistaken in thinking the French Decrees repealed, and extravagant in requiring the blockade of 1806 to be repealed in consequence; yet as long as any hope remained of prevailing with the President to correct his error, American ships, captured while acting in pursuance of it, should not be condemned. Even under the challenge expressly proclaimed by the non-importation, the British government anxiously desired to avoid a positive rupture. As for the “Chesapeake” affair, Foster was ordered to settle it to suit the American government, guarding only against the admission of insulting expressions. He was to remonstrate and protest against the seizure of the Floridas,[26] but was not to commit his Government further. Finally, a secret instruction[27] notified Foster that in case America should persist in her non-importation, England would retaliate,—probably by increasing her import duties, and excluding American commerce from the East Indies.
These instructions conformed with the general attitude of English society. Though sobered by the disasters that attended Tory government, England had not yet passed beyond the stage when annoyances created only the wish to ignore them. No one would admit serious danger from America. In Parliament, Pinkney’s abrupt and hostile departure was barely mentioned, and ministers denied it importance. The “London Times,” of March 1, complained that no one could be induced to feel an interest in the American question. “There is certainly great apathy in the public mind generally upon the questions now at issue between us and our quondam colonies, which it is difficult to arouse, and perhaps useless to attempt.” Here and there the old wish for a war with the United States was still felt;[28] but the public asked only to hear no more on American subjects. Even the “Times” refused, April 13, to continue discussion on matters “upon which the feelings of the great bulk of the nation are peculiarly blunt.” Wellesley’s course and Foster’s instructions reflected only the lassitude and torpor of the day; but within eighteen months Wellesley, in open Parliament, criticised what he charged as the policy, not of himself, but of his colleagues, in language which implied that the public apathy was assumed rather than real. “The disposition of the American government was quite evident,” he said, Nov. 30, 1812;[29] “and therefore common policy should have urged ministers to prepare fully for the event; and they should have made adequate exertion either to pacify, to intimidate, or to punish America.” Knowing this, they sent out Foster, powerless either for defence or attack, to waste his time at Washington, where for ten years his predecessors had found the grave of their ambitions.