When the official disavowal appeared in the newspapers of May 25, Canning had an interview with Pinkney.[76] At great length and with much detail he read the instructions he had given to Erskine, and commented on the points in which Erskine had violated them. He complained of unfriendly expressions in the American notes; but he did not say why the arrangement failed to satisfy all the legitimate objects of England, nor did he suggest any improvement or change which would make the arrangement, as it existed, agreeable to him. On the other hand, he announced that though Erskine would have to be recalled, his successor was already appointed and would sail for America within a few days.
If Canning showed, by his indulgence to American vessels and his haste to send out a new minister, the wish to avoid a rupture with the United States, his selection of an agent for that purpose was so singular as to suggest that he relied on terror rather than on conciliation. In case Erskine had obeyed his instructions, which ordered him merely to prepare the way for negotiation, Canning had fixed upon George Henry Rose as the negotiator.[77] Considering the impression left in America by Rose on his previous mission, his appointment seemed almost the worst that could have been made; but bad as the effect of such a selection would have been, one man, and perhaps only one, in England was certain to make a worse; and him Canning chose. The new minister was Francis James Jackson. Whatever good qualities Jackson possessed were overshadowed by the reputation he had made for himself at Copenhagen. His name was a threat of violence; his temper and manners were notorious; and nothing but his rank in the service marked him as suitable for the post. Pinkney, whose self-control and tact in these difficult circumstances could hardly be too much admired, listened in silence to Canning’s announcement, and rather than risk making the situation worse, reported that Jackson was, he believed, “a worthy man, and although completely attached to all those British principles and doctrines which sometimes give us trouble will, I should hope, give satisfaction.” The English press was not so forbearing. The “Morning Chronicle” of May 29 said that the appointment had excited general surprise, owing to “the character of the individual;” and Pinkney himself, in a later despatch, warned his Government that “it is rather a prevailing notion here that this gentleman’s conduct will not and cannot be what we all wish, and that a better choice might have been made.”[78]
Jackson himself sought the position, knowing its difficulties. May 23, the day of his appointment, he wrote privately to his brother in Spain: “I am about to enter upon a most delicate—I hope not desperate—enterprise.”[79] At a later time, embittered by want of support from home, he complained that Canning had sent him on an errand which he knew to be impossible to perform.[80] So well understood between Canning and Jackson was the nature of the service, that Jackson asked and received as a condition of his acceptance the promise that his employment should last not less than twelve months.[81] The delicate enterprise of which he spoke could have been nothing more than that of preventing a rupture between England and America; but until he studied his instructions, he could hardly have known in its full extent how desperate this undertaking would be.
Canning made no haste. Nearly two months elapsed before Jackson sailed. After correcting Erskine’s mistake and replacing the United States in their position under the Orders in Council of April 26, Canning, June 13, made a statement to the House of Commons. Declining to touch questions of general policy for the reason that negotiations were pending, he contented himself with satisfying the House that Erskine had acted contrary to instructions and deserved recall. James Stephen showed more clearly the spirit of Government by avowing the opinion “that America in all her proceedings had no wish to promote an impartial course with respect to France and this country.” The Whigs knew little or nothing of the true facts; Erskine’s conduct could not be defended; no one cared to point out that Canning left to America no dignified course but war, and public interest was once more concentrated with painful anxiety on the continent of Europe. America dropped from sight, and Canning’s last and worst acts toward the United States escaped notice or knowledge.
The session of Parliament ended June 21, a week before the special session of Congress came to an end; and while England waited impatiently for news from Vienna, where Napoleon was making ready for the battle of Wagram, Canning drew up the instructions to Jackson,—the last of the series of papers by which, through the peculiar qualities of his style even more than by the violence of his acts, he embittered to a point that seemed altogether contrary to their nature a whole nation of Americans against the nation that gave them birth. If the famous phrase of Canning was ever in any sense true,—that he called a new world into existence to redress the balance of the old,—it was most nearly true in the sense that his instructions and letters forced the United States into a nationality of character which the war of the Revolution itself had failed to give them.
The instructions to Jackson[82]—five in number—were dated July 1, and require careful attention if the train of events which brought the United States to the level of war with England is to be understood.
The first instruction began by complaint of Erskine’s conduct, passing quickly to a charge of bad faith against the American government, founded on “the publicity so unwarrantably given” to Erskine’s arrangement:—
“The premature publication of the correspondence by the American government so effectually precluded any middle course of explanation and accommodation that it is hardly possible to suppose that it must not have been resorted to in a great measure with that view.
“The American government cannot have believed that such an arrangement as Mr. Erskine consented to accept was conformable to his instructions. If Mr. Erskine availed himself of the liberty allowed to him of communicating those instructions on the affair of the Orders in Council, they must have known that it was not so; but even without such communication they cannot by possibility have believed that without any new motive, and without any apparent change in the dispositions of the enemy, the British government could have been disposed at once and unconditionally to give up the system on which they have been acting, and which they had so recently refused to relinquish, even in return for considerations which though far from being satisfactory were yet infinitely more so than anything which can be supposed to have been gained by Mr. Erskine’s arrangement.”
Canning attributed this conduct to a hope held by President Madison that the British government would feel itself compelled, however reluctantly, to sanction an agreement which it had not authorized. In this case the American government had only itself to blame for the consequences:—