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.