Never again did this genial gentleman sun himself in the rays of Executive power, or recover the smallest share of influence. He returned to Baltimore, where he lived thirty years longer without distinguishing himself; but about three months after his retirement from office, in the month of June, 1811, he published an Address to the People, charging President Madison with offences more or less grave, and surprising every one by representing himself as having persistently but vainly opposed Madison’s fixed purpose of making a virtual alliance with France. The evidence of the late Secretary of State, who might reasonably be thought the best informed and most competent judge, confirmed the Federalist and British theory that Madison was under secret pledges to Napoleon. So gravely did it compromise Madison that he caused Joel Barlow to write a semi-official reply in the “National Intelligencer;” and although Barlow wrote in a bad temper, Madison himself wrote privately in a worse.
“You will have noticed in the ‘National Intelligencer,’” he told Jefferson July 8,[293] “that the wicked publication of Mr. Smith is not to escape with impunity. It is impossible, however, that the whole turpitude of his conduct can be understood without disclosures to be made by myself alone, and of course, as he knows, not to be made at all. Without these his infamy is daily fastening upon him, leaving no other consolation than the malignant hope of revenging his own ingratitude and guilt on others.”
Robert Smith hardly deserved such invective. If the taunts of Madison, Barlow, and the Republican press and party at his incompetence were well-founded, the party had only itself to blame for putting such a man in so high a position. If triumphant in nothing else, Smith overthrew both Madison and Barlow by the retort with which he met their sneers, and retaliated the charge of incompetence.
“This advocate,” replied Smith (in the “Baltimore American”) to Barlow (in the Washington “Intelligencer”), “would have us believe that many persons both in and out of Congress thought that Mr. Smith from want of talents and integrity was quite unfit for the Department of State, and that his appointment was the effect of an intrigue. Were there any truth in this remark, it could not fail to convince every person of the utter unfitness of Mr. Madison himself for his office. It in plain English says that from the officious persuasion of a few intriguers he had appointed to the most important and the highest station in the government a person without talents and without integrity; and this person not a stranger, respecting whom he might have been misled, but one who had been his colleague in office during the long term of eight years, and of whose fitness he of course had better means of judging than any other person or persons whatever; nay, more,—to this same person, without talents or integrity, was offered by Mr. Madison not only the mission to Russia, but the important office of the Treasury Department.”
CHAPTER XVIII.
April 1, 1811, Monroe took charge of the State Department. The first person to claim his attention was the French Emperor, and Monroe had reasons for knowing that diplomatists of reputed sagacity found use for uninterrupted attention when they undertook to deal with Napoleon.
Monroe stood in a situation of extreme difficulty, hampered not only by the pledges of his own government, but still more by the difficulty of dealing at all with the government of France. When Armstrong quitted Paris in September, 1810, being obliged to fix upon some American competent to take charge of the legation at Paris, he chose Jonathan Russell. The selection was the best he could make. Jonathan Russell possessed advantages over ordinary ministers coming directly from America. A native of Rhode Island, educated at Brown University, after leaving college he followed the business of a merchant, and in November, 1809, sailed from Boston in a ship of his own, which arrived at Tönning in Denmark only to be at once sequestered under Napoleon’s Decrees. He passed several months in efforts to recover the property, and acquired experience in the process. About forty years old, and more or less acquainted with the people, politics, and languages of Europe, he was better fitted than any secretary of legation then abroad for the burden that Armstrong had found intolerable; yet the oldest and ablest diplomatist America ever sent to Europe might have despaired of effecting any good result with such means as were at the disposal of this temporary agent, who had not even the support of a direct commission from the President.
Russell felt the embarrassment of the position he was called to fill. Armstrong departed September 12, bearing Cadore’s promise that the decrees should cease to operate November 1, and saying as little as possible of a condition precedent. The 1st of November came, and Russell asked the Duc de Cadore whether the revocation had taken place; but a month passed without his receiving an answer. December 4, 1810, Russell wrote to the Secretary of State,[294]—
“No one here except the Emperor knows if the Berlin and Milan Decrees be absolutely revoked or not; and no one dares inquire of him concerning them. The general opinion of those with whom I have conversed on the subject is that they are revoked. There are indeed among those who entertain this opinion several counsellors of State; but this is of little importance, as the construction which the Emperor may choose to adopt will alone prevail.”
At about the same time Russell wrote to Pinkney at London a letter[295] expressing the opinion that, as the decrees had not been executed for one entire month against any vessel arriving in France, this fact created a presumption that the decrees were repealed. He could not be blamed for an opinion so cautious, yet he was mistaken in committing himself even to that extent, for he learned a few days afterward that two American vessels had been seized at Bordeaux, and he found himself obliged to write the Duc de Cadore a strong remonstrance on the ground that as this was the first case that had occurred since November 1 to which the decrees could have applied, the seizures created a presumption that the decrees were not repealed.[296] Russell’s instructions from America, including the President’s proclamation of November 2, arrived three days later, December 13, requiring him to assume the revocation of the decrees; but only two days after receiving them, he read in the “Moniteur” of December 15 Cadore’s official report to the Emperor declaring that the decrees would never be revoked as long as England maintained her blockades; and again, December 17, he found in the same newspaper the Count de Semonville’s official address before the Senate, declaring that the Decrees of Berlin and Milan should be the “palladium of the seas.”