“This country has determined to convert the negotiation into a job, and to draw from it advantages merely pecuniary to herself, or, in other language, to her agents. It is this venality that explains her present reserve, the degree of excitement displayed by the Emperor on reading the note, and the marked incivility with which Mr. Monroe was treated by Talleyrand. Since his departure, repeated intimations have been given to me that if certain persons could be sufficiently gratified, the negotiation should be transferred hither, and brought to a close with which we should have no reason to find fault.”
Monroe, though honest as any man in public life, and more courageous in great emergencies than some of his friends or rivals, was commonly not quick at catching an idea, nor did he see it at last from a great elevation; but in this instance the idea was thrust so persistently into his face, that had he been blind he could not have missed it. Nothing could more clearly explain his situation than the language of the diary in which he recorded, for the President’s benefit, the daily course of his conduct.
“No other alternative,” he explained,[221] “presented itself to me than to abandon the object and return to London, or to submit to the terms which it was sufficiently well understood France was willing to accept, and seemed in some measure to dictate, which amounted to this: that we should create a new loan of about seventy millions of livres, and transfer the same to Spain, who would immediately pass them over to France, in consideration of which we should be put in possession of the disputed territory, under stipulations which should provide for the adjustment of the ultimate right there, and reimbursement of the money by instalment in seven years.”
“To submit to the terms proposed was altogether out of the question,” continued Monroe. Having led his Government to take the ground that West Florida had already been bought, he could not enter into a negotiation to buy it a second time. His instructions made this point a sine quâ non of negotiation. Recognizing that under these circumstances further effort was useless, or in his own words that no other alternative presented itself but to abandon the object and return to London, Monroe intimated to Talleyrand that he meant not only to pay no money, but also to negotiate in spite of Napoleon; and started for Madrid.
“I did not hesitate,” he wrote home,[222] “in many informal communications, the substance of which I was persuaded were made known to those in power, to declare most solemnly that I would sanction no measure which contemplated a payment of money to Spain in any transaction we might have with her in the affair,—by which was meant, by creation of stock or otherwise which took the money from our people; that neither the state of things between the parties, the example of France in a similar case, or my instructions, permitted it. These conversations were with a person who possessed the confidence of certain persons in power, as well as my own, though they were not of a nature to compromit either party. That circumstance enabled me to speak with the utmost freedom, and perhaps to say things which it might have been difficult to press directly in the same manner to the parties themselves.”
In thus defying France, Monroe, if he resembled European diplomatists, must have aimed at giving his Government an opportunity to break with the Emperor and to proceed against Florida by means of force. That he should have still hoped for success in negotiating at Madrid was hardly possible. Armstrong thought his chance desperate.[223]
“Mr. Monroe has no doubt communicated to you,” he wrote to the Secretary of State, “the motives which induced him to leave England in prosecution of his mission to Spain, and while here to attempt to draw from this Government some new declaration in support of our construction of the late treaty. With this view a note was prepared and transmitted through Livingston, the receipt of which was acknowledged by Mr. Talleyrand with a promise that ‘an answer should be given to it as soon as the Emperor should have signified his will on the subject.’ Having waited nearly a month, and no answer being given, having some reason to believe that any declaration from this Court now would be less favorable than those already made, and fearful lest something might be lost at Madrid, while nothing could be gained here, he set out on the 8th instant for Spain. I have but little hope, however, that he will be able to do more than fulfil the forms of his mission.”
Armstrong preferred, as he expressed it, “an effort (which cannot fail) to do the business at home.” He had already discovered that the Emperor was personally irritated with the Americans, that he took no pains to conceal it, and that this irritation was a cause of his reserve.
“I have employed every means in my power to ascertain the cause of this cause, and have learned from a person sufficiently near him to know the fact, that this temper originated in representations made by Leclerc and others from St. Domingo; that it has since been kept alive by the incident of the war in that country, the trade carried on between it and the United States, the freedom with which he is treated in our press, the matrimonial connection of Jerome, and, above all, the support which principles he wishes to extinguish in France receive from the progressing prosperity of the United States.”
With Napoleon in this frame of mind; with Godoy and Cevallos in a humor far worse; and with Talleyrand in such a temper as not to allow of his treating Monroe with civility,—the American plenipotentiary departed to Madrid, hoping that something might occur to overcome his difficulties. During his journey, Charles IV. declared war against England. This long-foreseen event, which should have brought Spain to terms with the United States, in fact threw her only at the feet of Napoleon. Henceforward every offence to Spain was an offence to France, which the Emperor was the more bound to resent because by treaty he must regard a war upon Charles IV. as a war upon himself.