This was but Canning once more, without the sarcasm. With his grand air of sultan and viceroy, Wellesley ignored the existence of complaints, and professed himself “ready to receive, with sentiments of undiminished amity and good-will, any communication which the Government of the United States may deem beneficial;” but when his course led, two years afterward, to the only communication which could logically result,—a declaration of war,—Wellesley declared in Parliament[222] “that a more unjust attack was never made upon the peace of any nation than that of the American government upon England;” and that “the American government had been long infected with a deadly hatred toward this country, and (if he might be allowed an unusual application of a word) with a deadly affection toward France.” He blamed only his own colleagues, who “ought in fact to have expected and been fully prepared for war with America.”
That the American government and people were infected with a deadly hatred toward England, if not already true, was becoming true with a rapidity which warranted Wellesley in taking it for fact, if he could do nothing to prevent it; but he should at least have explained the reasons why his colleagues, who in his opinion showed culpable neglect, failed to expect war or to prepare for it. In truth his colleagues had as little reason to expect war with America as he had to charge the American government with “deadly affection” toward France. They would do nothing to conciliate the United States because they had what seemed the best ground for thinking that the United States were already conciliated, and that the difficulties between America and France were such as to prevent America from quarrelling with England. Wellesley’s note was written March 14; Louis of Holland, March 16, signed the treaty obliging him to seize the American ships in his ports; Napoleon signed, March 23, the Rambouillet Decree. In every country within French control Napoleon was waging avowed war against the United States in retaliation for the Non-intercourse Act; while in America, March 31, Congress abandoned the idea of even a Navigation Act against England, and May 1 restored relations with her, without asking an equivalent or expressing unfriendly feeling. Under such circumstances, ministers more intelligent than Spencer Perceval were warranted in thinking that the part of wisdom was to leave American affairs alone.
The point was all-important in the story of the war. Governments rarely succeed in forethought, and their favorite rule is to do nothing where nothing need be done. Had the British government expected war, even Spencer Perceval would have bestirred himself to prevent it; but ministers neither expected nor had reason to expect hostilities. On the contrary, the only bright spot in Perceval’s horizon was the United States, where his influence seemed paramount. The triumph of Perceval’s policy there gave him strength at home to disregard Wellesley’s attempts at domination. An intelligent by-stander, through whom Lord Wellesley kept up relations with the Whigs, wrote, May 1, to the Marquess of Buckingham a letter,[223] which threw light on the ideas then influencing Wellesley:—
“The only hope Perceval can naturally have is in the turn which peace, or rather accommodation, with America may give the public mind; as also the successes in Spain against France which may be looked for. The former, in my opinion, as well from the devotion of Pinkney to Lord Wellesley as the late rapacious act of Bonaparte, may be looked on as certain.”
This letter, showing the certainty felt by all parties in American friendship, happened to be written on the day when the President signed the Act restoring commercial relations. After all that had occurred,—seizures, blockades, impressments, and Orders in Council; the “Chesapeake” affair, Rose’s mission, Canning’s letters, Erskine’s arrangement, and Jackson’s dismissal,—the British government counted its American policy as its chief success, and had the strongest reasons for doing so. American legislation was controlled by British influence, and Napoleon reasonably thought that neither robbery nor magnanimity would affect the result.
The Marquess of Buckingham’s friend gave him exact information, as the news a few weeks later, of the Act of May 1, proved; but evidence much more convincing of the confidence felt by ministers in the attitude of America was given by George Canning, who claimed the credit for having brought about that settlement which gave a new lease of life to the Perceval Administration. June 15, a week before Parliament rose, Canning spoke.[224]
“The recent proceedings of Congress,” he said, “have effected so much of what it was the anxious wish of the Government of which I was a member to attain, that I trust all our difficulties with America may be speedily adjusted. In truth I had never much doubt upon my mind that America, if left to her own policy and to the effect of those discussions which would take place in her own legislatures, general and provincial, would at no distant period arrive at that point at which, by the late Act of Congress, she appears to have arrived. No man is more anxious than I am for an amicable accommodation with that Power; but I trust at the same time that the change in the policy of the United States has not been effected by any improper concessions on our part,—a circumstance which I can fully disclaim during the period that I remained in office. I should rather hope that it has been the consequence of a determined adherence to that system which has been so often declaimed against in this House, but which has proved as clearly beneficial to the commercial interests as it has been consistent with the political dignity of this nation.”
While it was possibly true, or soon became true, that the United States were, as Wellesley afterward alleged, infected by a deadly hostility to England, neither Wellesley nor Canning, nor any other English statesman in the year 1810, suspected the strength of that passion, or dreamed of shaping a policy to meet the hatred which ought to have been constantly in their minds. Wellesley’s personal wishes were not easy to fathom, but they probably leaned, under Pinkney’s influence, toward conciliation. His actual measures showed a want of decision, or a degree of feebleness, unsuspected in his character.
Quite early in Wellesley’s career as Foreign Secretary, an opportunity occurred to test his energies. January 25, 1810,[225] Armstrong sent to Pinkney a copy of Napoleon’s offer to withdraw the Decree of Berlin, if England would withdraw her previous blockade of the coast from Elbe to Brest. Nothing could be easier for England. The blockade of May 16, 1806, had been invented by Charles James Fox at the beginning of his short Administration as an act of friendship toward the United States, in order to evade the application of Sir William Scott’s legal principles; it was strictly enforced only between Ostend and the Seine, a short strip of coast within the narrow seas completely under British control, and in part visible from British shores, while the subsequent Orders in Council had substituted a series of other measures in place of this temporary device, until at last the blockade of Holland and the Empire, from the river Ems to Trieste,—in which, April 26, 1809, the restrictive system of England was merged,—seemed to sweep away all trace of the narrower restraint. No one but Sir William Scott could say with certainty, as matter of law, whether Fox’s blockade was or was not in force; but for years past England had established a depot at Helgoland in the mouth of the Elbe, for no other purpose than to violate its own blockade by smuggling merchandise into Germany, Denmark, and Holland. From every point of view the continued existence of Fox’s blockade seemed impossible to suppose.
February 15 Pinkney wrote to Wellesley, asking whether that or any other blockade of France previous to January, 1807, was understood to be in force.[226] March 2 Wellesley replied that the restrictions imposed in May, 1806, “were afterward comprehended in the Order of Council of Jan. 7, 1807, which order is still in force.”[227] This reply encouraged Pinkney to infer that Fox’s blockade had merged in Howick’s Order in Council. March 7 he wrote again to the Marquess,[228]—