In a note of two lines, Pinkney replied[13] that he had no inducement to trouble his Lordship further on the subject. The same day he received a notice that the Prince Regent would hold his first diplomatic levee February 19; but instead of accepting the invitation, Pinkney wrote with the same brevity to ask at what time the Prince Regent would do him the honor to give his audience of leave.[14]
This abrupt course brought the Government partially to reason. Within forty-eight hours Wellesley wrote to Pinkney a private letter[15] of apology for the delay in appointing a minister to Washington, and of regret that this delay should have been misunderstood; he announced that Augustus J. Foster, late British minister in Sweden, would be immediately gazetted as minister to the United States; and his letter closed by a remark which came as near deprecation as Pinkney’s temper would allow: “You will, of course, exercise your own judgment, under these circumstances, respecting the propriety of requiring an audience of leave on the grounds which you have stated.” With this private letter, Lord Wellesley sent an official notice that the Prince Regent would receive Mr. Pinkney February 19, by his desire, for an audience of leave.
The responsibility thus thrown upon Pinkney was more serious than had ever before, or has ever since, fallen to the share of a minister of the United States in England. The policy of withdrawing the United States minister from London might be doubted, not so much because it was violent, as because it was likely to embarrass the President more than it embarrassed England. If the President was indeed bent on war, and wished to hasten its declaration, the recall of his minister in London might be proper; but if he still expected to negotiate, London was the spot where he needed to keep his strongest diplomatist, and, if possible, more than one. Yet the worst possible mistake was to recede once more,—to repeat the comedy of American errors, and to let the British government assume that its policy was still safe.
Pinkney hesitated, and consulted his instructions.[16] These were dated Nov. 15, 1810, and ordered Pinkney, in case no successor to F. J. Jackson should then have been appointed, to take leave of absence, entrusting the legation to a chargé d’affaires; but this positive order was practically revoked in the concluding sentence: “Considering the season at which this instruction may have its effect, and the possibility of a satisfactory change in the posture of our relations with Great Britain, the time of your return to the United States is left to your discretion and convenience.”
These instructions did not warrant Pinkney in demanding leave of absence on any other ground than that of failure to appoint a minister at Washington. They did not warrant him in returning to America at all if he saw the possibility of such an appointment. Pinkney was obliged to put a free construction on the President’s language. Abandoning the ground that his departure was a necessary result of the absence of a British minister at Washington, he asked Lord Wellesley, in an official note, dated February 17, what Mr. Foster was to do when he arrived there?[17] “I presume that for the restoration of harmony between the two countries, the Orders in Council will be relinquished without delay; that the blockade of 1806 will be annulled; that the case of the ‘Chesapeake’ will be arranged in the manner heretofore intended; and in general that all such just and reasonable acts will be done as are necessary to make us friends.” So important a letter was probably never written by any other American diplomatist without instructions from his Government,—for it was in effect an ultimatum, preliminary to the rupture of relations and ultimate war; yet even in this final list of American demands made by the American minister in withdrawing from London, impressment was not expressly mentioned.
Wellesley replied in a private letter[18] dated February 23, with the formal avowal that “it would be neither candid toward you, nor just toward this Government, to countenance any interpretation which might favor a supposition that it was intended by this Government to relinquish any of the principles which I have so often endeavored to explain to you.” Nothing in Wellesley’s letter showed a desire to irritate, and his refusals left less sting than was left by Canning’s concessions; but the issue was fairly joined, and America was at liberty to act upon it as she pleased.
In order to leave no doubt of his meaning, Pinkney instantly[19] claimed his audience of leave for February 28, declining, in the mean time, to attend the diplomatic levee which by postponement took place only February 26. His conduct was noticed and understood, as he meant it should be; and as his audience still remains the only occasion when an American minister at London has broken relations in a hostile manner, with resulting war, it has an interest peculiar to itself. Several accounts were preserved of what passed at the interview. Pinkney’s official report recorded the words used by him:[20]—
“I stated to the Prince Regent the grounds upon which it had become my duty to take my leave and to commit the business of the legation to a chargé d’affaires; and I concluded by expressing my regret that my humble efforts in the execution of the instructions of my Government to set to rights the embarrassed and disjointed relations of the two countries had wholly failed; and that I saw no reason to expect that the great work of their reconciliation was likely to be accomplished through any other agency.”
According to Pinkney, and according to the official report of Lord Wellesley,[21] the Prince Regent replied in terms of the utmost amity toward the United States. Another account of the interview gave the impression that the Prince Regent had not shown himself so gracious toward the departing minister as the official reports implied. Francis James Jackson, who dogged Pinkney’s footsteps with the personal malevolence he had almost a right to feel, and who haunted the Court and Foreign Office in the hope of obtaining—what he never received—some public mark of approval, wrote to Timothy Pickering a long letter on Pinkney’s departure:[22]—
“It has occasioned much surprise here that exactly at the moment of Pinkney’s demand being complied with he should nevertheless take what he calls an inamicable leave.... It was not expected that he would depart so far from his usual urbanity as to decline the invitation that was sent him in common with the rest of the foreign ministers to attend the Regent’s levee. It was not probable after this that the audience of leave which he claimed should answer his expectation. It was very short. Mr. Pinkney was told that the Regent was desirous of cultivating a good understanding with the United States; that he had given a proof of it in the appointment of a minister as soon as his acceptance of the Regency enabled him to appoint one; that the Orders in Council would have been repealed, but that his Royal Highness never could or would surrender the maritime rights of his country. Mr. Pinkney then made some profession of his personal sentiments, to which he was answered: ‘Sir, I cannot look into men’s minds; I can only judge of men’s motives by their conduct.’ And then the audience ended.”