As though to annoy Mr. Gallatin with indefinite difficulties and delays, a prolonged Cabinet crisis now occurred. Lord Liverpool died suddenly in February, 1827, and the King had to decide whether his authority was sufficient to sustain Mr. Canning as Prime Minister against the personal isolation in which the temper, rather than the social position, of that remarkable man placed him. On the 28th April, Mr. Gallatin wrote to Mr. Clay: “At the dinner of the 23d, Mr. Canning came near Baron Humboldt and me, and told us, ‘You see that the opinion universally entertained abroad, and very generally indeed in England, that this government is an Aristocracy, is not true. It is’ said he, emphatically, ‘a Monarchy. The Whigs had found it out in 1784, when they tried to oppose the King’s prerogative of choosing his Prime Minister. The Tories have now repeated the same experiment, and with no greater success.’ He appears certainly very confident, and speaks of any intended opposition in Parliament as if he had no fear of it.” Then Mr. Huskisson, who was the chief commissioner on the English side, was forced to go abroad for his health. Mr. Grant took Mr. Huskisson’s place. Under the steady influence of Mr. Gallatin’s conciliatory course and of his strong arguments, the British Ministry, pressed as they were by absorbing contests at home, tended towards a better disposition, and, although they still adhered with determination to those points upon which they had committed themselves, they proved more compliant upon others. This tendency was rather hastened than retarded by the death of Mr. Canning in August, and the elevation of Lord Goderich to the post of Prime Minister. The tone of Mr. Gallatin’s letters to Mr. Clay became more cheerful. On the 6th August, after much discussion, a treaty was signed which continued the commercial convention of 1815 indefinitely, leaving either party at liberty to abrogate it at twelve months’ notice. On the same day another convention was signed by which the joint use of the disputed Oregon territory, as defined in the 3d Article of the convention of 1818, was also indefinitely continued, subject likewise to abrogation at twelve months’ notice. Finally, on the 29th September, a new convention was signed providing for the reference of the disputed Maine boundary to a friendly sovereign.
This accomplished, Mr. Gallatin hastened homewards, and, after a passage of fifty-two days, arrived in New York on the 30th November.
J. Q. ADAMS TO GALLATIN.
Washington, December 12, 1827.
Dear Sir,—I have received your obliging letter from New York, and, although it would give me great pleasure to see you here, I know not that any material public interest will require your presence. Your three conventions were sent yesterday to the Senate for their consideration. In what light they will view them I cannot yet foresee. I wish they may prove as satisfactory to them as they are to me.
I regret exceedingly for the public interest that you found yourself under the necessity of coming home. At the time of your arrival in England, although I do not believe they had a deliberate purpose of coming to a rupture with us, they were undoubtedly in a waspish temper, and Mr. Canning had determined to play off upon us one of his flourishes for effect. He had been laying up a stock of resentments, for which he was hoping to expose us to public and open humiliation. I believe that which most rankled in his mind was the disappointment of the slave-trade convention, though he said perhaps not a word to you about it.
But, whatever it was, your convention upon the slave indemnities first turned the tide of feeling and soothed irritations on both sides. You gained an ascendency over him by suffering him to fancy himself victorious on some points, by the forbearance to expose too glaringly his absurdities, and his position, from the time of Lord Liverpool’s political demise, warned him that he had enemies enough upon his hands without seeking this querelle d’Allemand with us.
Nothing can be more preposterous than their obstinacy upon this colonial trade squabble; and you had not set your foot on board ship before they began to grow sick of it. A hurricane had already burst upon the island of St. Kitts and the Virgin Isles. They have now by proclamation opened the Bahama Islands, for vessels in ballast to go and take salt and fruit, and on the 31st of October Mr. Grant told Mr. Lawrence that he regretted you had not settled this affair as satisfactorily as the others. Lord Dudley also admires the great ability of your last note on the subject. These are among the indications not only that their experiment of supplying their islands without us is failing, but that they begin to feel it. I believe had you stayed over the winter, they would have come to our terms upon this affair before another summer. Whether they would promote our own interest so well as the present condition of things, remains, as it always has been, a more doubtful point to me.
The North-Eastern boundary question is far otherwise important to us than that of the colonial trade,—so important as to give me the deepest concern. I hope your convention will have the approbation of the Senate, and that the sequel will be satisfactory to us. We shall want the benefit of your information and of your advice.
There are so many of these breakers close aboard of us that I have lost some of my concern for the distant danger of impressment. Mr. Canning was so fond of creating worlds that, under his administration, the turn of a straw would have plunged Great Britain into a war with any nation upon earth. His successors will be more prudent, and I hope more pacific. If they should engage in a war to which we shall be in the first instance neutral, I doubt whether they will authorize their officers to impress beyond their own territorial jurisdiction. I would not lose any opportunity of coming to an arrangement with them to abolish this odious practice, but I am weary of renewing with them desperate discussions upon it.