Yet calm as the atmosphere appeared to be, signs of future storm were not wholly wanting. Had Monroe been naturally anxious, he might, without seeking far, have found cause for anxiety serious enough to take away all appetite for Spanish travel, and to hold him close to his post until some one should consent to relieve him from an ungrateful and unpromising duty. The American minister at London in 1804 could hope to gain nothing either for his country or for himself, and he stood always on the verge of disaster; but when he was required to take a “high tone” in the face of a nation almost insane with anxiety, he challenged more chances of mortification than any but a desperate politician would have cared to risk.
Monroe had at first nothing to do but to watch the course of public opinion in England. During the autumn of 1803, while President Jefferson and Secretary Madison at Washington received Merry with a changed policy, and all through the winter, while Washington was torn by “canons of etiquette” and by contests of strength between Jefferson, Madison, Casa Yrujo, and Merry, the United States minister in London was left at peace to study the political problems which bore on his own fortunes and on those of his friends at home, as well as on the interests of the Union.
Beneath the calm of general society mutterings of discontent from powerful interests could be heard,—occasional outbursts of jealousy, revivals of old and virulent passions, inveterate prejudices, which made as yet but little noise in the Press or in Parliament, but which rankled in the breasts of individuals. One of the earlier symptoms of trouble came in a familiar shape. For twenty years, whenever a question had arisen of hostility to American trade or of prejudice against American character, the first of Englishmen to stimulate it, and the loudest to proclaim the dangers of Great Britain, had been John Baker Holroyd, Earl of Sheffield, whose memory might have been lost under the weight of his pamphlets had it not been embalmed in the autobiography of Gibbon. Lord Sheffield felt such devotion to the British navigation laws as could be likened only to the idolatry which a savage felt toward his fetich; one might almost have supposed that to him the State, the Church, and the liberties of England, the privileges of her nobility, and even the person of her sovereign, were sacred chiefly because they guaranteed the safety of her maritime system. This fanaticism of an honest mind led to results so extravagant as to become at times ridiculous. The existence of the United States was a protest against Lord Sheffield’s political religion; and therefore in his eyes the United States were no better than a nation of criminals, capable of betraying their God for pieces of silver. The independence of America had shattered the navigation system of England into fragments; but Lord Sheffield clung the more desperately to his broken idol. Among the portions which had been saved were the West Indian colonies. If at that day the navigation laws had one object more important than another, it was to foster the prosperity of these islands, in order that their sugar and molasses, coffee and rum, might give freight to British shippers and employment to British seamen; but to Lord Sheffield the islands were only a degree less obnoxious than the revolted United States, for they were American at heart, complaining because they were forbidden to trade freely with New York and Boston, and even asserting that when the navigation laws were strictly enforced their slaves died of starvation and disease. Lord Sheffield seriously thought them ungrateful to murmur, and held it their duty to perish in silence rather than ask a relaxation of the law.
The rupture of the Peace of Amiens, in May, 1803, set Lord Sheffield again at work; and unfortunately the material lay ready to his hand. The whole subject of his discourse related to a single fact; but this fact was full of alarm to the English people. The extraordinary decrease of British tonnage in the American trade, the corresponding increase of American shipping, and the loud exultation of the Yankees over the British shipmasters were proofs of the danger which menaced England, whose existence depended on maritime strength. In the month of February, 1804, Lord Sheffield published a pamphlet,[305] which dwelt on these calamities as due to the wanton relaxation of the navigation laws and the senseless clamor of the colonies. He was answered in a pamphlet[306] written by one of the colonial agents; and the answer was convincing, so far as Lord Sheffield’s argument was concerned, but his array of statistics remained to disturb the British mind.
Monroe might therefore count on having, some day, to meet whatever mischief the shipping interest of Great Britain could cause. No argument was needed to prove that the navy would support with zeal whatever demands should be made by the mercantile marine. There remained the immense influence of the West Indian colonies to consider; and if this should be brought into active sympathy with the shipowners and the royal marine against American trade, no minister in England—not even Pitt himself at the height of his power—would be strong enough to resist the combination.
The staple product of the West Indian islands was sugar, and owing to several causes the profits of the planters had until 1798 been large. The insurrection of the Haytian negroes in 1792 annihilated for the time the supply of sugar from St. Domingo; prices rose in consequence, and a great increase in the number of sugar plantations naturally followed. Several of the Dutch and French islands fell into the hands of England, and adventurers flocked to them, eager to invest British capital in new sugar-fields. Under this impulse the supply again increased. Cuba, Porto Rico, Guadeloupe, and at last St. Domingo itself under Toussaint’s rule poured sugar into the market. American ships carried French and Spanish sugar to Europe until it became a drug. The high price lasted till 1798; in that year Pitt even imposed a heavy additional duty upon it as a sure source of revenue. In 1799 the effect of over-production first became apparent. During the next few years the price of sugar fell, until great suffering began to prevail in the islands, and the planters wrote piteous letters of distress to England. Their agents wrote back that the English market was flooded with colonial produce: “Send no more sugar home; give it away rather!” was their advice,—and the colonists, without the means of purchasing even the necessaries of life, supplicated government to let them send their sugar to the United States, to be exchanged for American produce.[307]
This the government dared not do, for the shipping interest must in such a case be sacrificed. Debarred from this outlet for their produce, the colonists looked about them for some other resource; and since they were not allowed to act independently of the shipmasters, they saw no other course than to join hands with the shipping interest, and to invoke the aid of the navigation laws. The glut of the European market was caused by American neutrals, who were allowed to carry French and Spanish sugars from the West Indies to Europe. If this neutral trade could be stopped, the supply of French and Spanish sugar would be left to rot in Cuba and Guadeloupe, while British colonial produce would enjoy a monopoly throughout Europe.
Even before the Peace of Amiens this policy gained many adherents, and the Peace tended to strengthen their influence. The Addington ministry was not only weak in character, but timid in policy; and by a natural reaction it threw restless and ambitious younger statesmen into an attitude of protest. A new departure was felt to be necessary; and the nervous energy of England, strained almost to insanity by the anxieties of ten years’ desperate danger, exhausted itself in the cry for one great commanding spirit, who should meet Bonaparte with his own weapons on his own field.
This cry produced George Canning. Of him and his qualities much will be said hereafter, when his rise to power shall have made him a more prominent figure; here need be noticed only the forces which sought assertion through him, and the nature of the passions which he was peculiarly qualified to express. At all times nations have been most imperilled by the violence of disappointed or terrified interests; but the danger was never so great as when these interests joined to a greed for selfish gain the cry for an unscrupulous chief. Every American schoolboy once knew by heart the famous outburst of Canning, which began, “Away with the cant of ‘measures, not men’!” but of the millions of persons who read or heard this favorite extract few understood its meaning to American interests and feelings. This celebrated speech, made Dec. 8, 1802, at a time when Addington’s cautious ministry still held office, was intended to dwarf Addington and elevate Pitt,—to ridicule caution and extol violence. “Sir,” cried Canning, “to meet, to check, to resist, to stand up against Bonaparte, we want arms of the same kind. I vote for the large military establishments with all my heart; but for the purpose of coping with Bonaparte, one great, commanding spirit is worth them all.”
“Arms of the same kind” were, speaking generally, irresponsible violence and disregard of morality. The great, commanding spirit of the moment was Mr. Pitt; but between the lines of this speech, by the light of its author’s whole career, the secret was easily read that in his opinion the man of the future who could best meet Bonaparte on his own ground with his own weapons was not William Pitt, but George Canning.