In the defence which Rose offered for thus disregarding his instructions, the cause of his embarrassment was plain. Duty required him to act as though England had hitherto endured with magnanimity the wrongs inflicted by America, but might find herself obliged soon to resent them. This attitude could have been maintained against ordinary forms of diplomacy, but Rose found himself stifled in the embraces of men whose hatred was necessary to warrant his instructions. He would gladly have assumed that Madison’s concessions and Robert Smith’s cajoleries were treacherous; but his Federalist friends, whose interests were actively English, assured him that if America could avoid a war with England, she would inevitably drift into a war with France. The temptation to show equal courtesy to that which was shown to him, the instinctive shrinking from a harsh act, the impossibility of obeying instructions without putting himself in the wrong, and finally perhaps an incapacity to understand the full humiliation implied in his unrevealed demands,—led him to give way, and to let Madison partially into the secret of Canning’s instructions.
On the evening of February 5 Rose and Erskine went to the house of the Secretary, and a draft of the proposed proclamation was there offered to them and accepted. The next day, at the Department, Rose delicately began to reveal the further disavowals he was instructed to demand. Even then he seemed ashamed to betray the whole, but delayed and discussed, knowing that he had done too much or too little for the objects of his mission. Not until after repeated interviews did he at last, February 14, mention “with an apology for omitting it before, when he intended to do it,” that a disavowal of Commodore Barron would be required.[151]
So cautious was Madison on his side that he offered to make a part of the required disavowals, provided these should be mutual. Rose declined this offer, but proposed nothing more, and seemed rather to invite a friendly failure of agreement. He ended the conversation of February 14 by addressing to Madison the usual words of rupture: “I will not dissemble that I leave you with the most painful impressions.”[152] February 16 Madison closed these informal interviews with the dry remark that the United States could not be expected to “make as it were an expiatory sacrifice to obtain redress, or beg for reparation.”[153]
The delay had strengthened Rose by weakening the President. The embargo was beginning to work. That the people should long submit to it was impossible, reported Rose; even North Carolina was turning against it. Monroe’s influence made itself felt.
“I learn this day,” wrote the British envoy February 17, “that Mr. Monroe has been indefatigable in representing through Virginia the contrasted systems of Great Britain and France in their true lights, the certain destruction which must result to America from the prevalence of the latter, and the necessity of uniting for existence with the former. He has undoubtedly acquired a very strong party in that State,—it is now said a decided majority in its legislature, and one entirely brought over to the views above enounced.”
February 22, only a few days after the rupture of negotiation, the Milan Decree arrived, and was published in the “National Intelligencer.” This violent act of Napoleon did much to divert popular indignation from England. Under the influence of this good fortune, Rose so little feared war as a consequence of his failure that he speculated rather as to the policy of accepting the United States as an ally:
“It would certainly be highly desirable,” he wrote,[154] “that a rupture between France and America should take place; but the latter under its present Constitution and Administration could take but a very feeble part in the warfare, and I know not if it is to be wished that it should be roused to greater exertions, which must lead to a more efficient form of government, a knowledge of its strength, and the development of extensive views of ambition.”
Nothing remained but to revert to Rose’s note of January 26, and to close the affair by a formal correspondence. No further attempt was made to conciliate the British envoy, or to obtain concessions from him; but February 24 he was told by Madison of two steps to be taken by the Government which bore on his negotiation. The President would recommend to Congress an increase of the army to ten thousand men, and a levy of twenty-four thousand volunteers. Madison added that these were to be considered as “measures of preparation, but not as leading to war, or as directed against any particular nation.” The Secretary added that an order had been issued to discharge all British subjects from national ships,—“an act of complaisance in its effects which he observed Great Britain could lay no claim to; which was done gratuitously, but from views of policy and fitness entertained by this Government.”
March 5 Madison at last sent his reply to Rose’s note of January 26. After repeating the reasons which forbade a withdrawal of the President’s proclamation, the Secretary closed by informing Rose that the President “has authorized me, in the event of your disclosing the terms of reparation which you believe will be satisfactory, and on its appearing that they are so, ... to proceed to concert with you a revocation of that act.”[155] Rose waited till March 17, as though hoping for some further overture, but finally replied, “It is with the most painful sensations of regret that I find myself ... under the necessity of declining to enter into the terms of negotiation which by direction of the President you therein offer.”[156]
Rose’s professions of regret were doubtless sincere. Apart from the wish felt by every young diplomatist to avoid the appearance of failure, Rose could not but see that his Government must wish to be relieved of the three American seamen imprisoned at Halifax, whose detention, admitted to be an act of violence, must become a festering sore in the relations of the two countries. That the American government meant to profit by it was evident. By leaving the “Chesapeake” affair unsettled, Rose played into the hands of a national party. For the first time since 1794 language began to be used to a British minister in the United States which he could not hear without loss of dignity or sense of discredit. The word “war” was semi-officially pronounced.