Chapter XXIX: Book IV: Diplomacy. 1813-1829 (6)

The experiment of living at Friendship Hill did not succeed. Not only was New Geneva an unsuitable place for the advancement of children, but it was beyond question intolerably dull for Mr. Gallatin himself. He made the experiment during one winter, and then abandoned it, as it proved, forever. The Governor of Pennsylvania offered him in May, 1825, the appointment of Canal Commissioner, a compliment to his well-known interest in internal improvements, which he declined. America was now convulsed by the visit of La Fayette, almost the first occasion on which the people of the United States showed their capacity for a genuine national enthusiasm. In his triumphal progress, La Fayette passed through Western Pennsylvania and was publicly welcomed by Mr. Gallatin in an address delivered before the court-house at Uniontown, in which he touched with much skill upon the subjects which were then most deeply interesting the liberals of all nations,--the emancipation of the Spanish colonies and of Greece. La Fayette was a propagandist of the Greek cause in America, and Mr. Gallatin had always sympathized with him on this point, even to the extent of meriting the thanks of the Greek government while he was minister in Paris. In the address to La Fayette at Uniontown he spoke with extraordinary earnestness of the critical situation of the Greeks:

"The cause is not yet won! An almost miraculous resistance may yet perhaps be overwhelmed by the tremendous superiority of numbers. And will the civilized, the Christian world,--for those words are synonymous,--will they look with apathy on the dreadful catastrophe that would ensue? A catastrophe which they, which even we alone could prevent with so much facility and almost without danger? I am carried beyond what I intended to say. It is due to your presence,--do I not know that wherever man, struggling for liberty, for existence, is most in danger, there is your heart?"

The address to La Fayette was a last revival of the old flame of eloquence and of republican feeling which had controlled and inspired the opposition to Washington and John Adams. It should be read after reading the great speech on foreign intercourse delivered in 1798, and taken in that connection it will offer a curious standard for comparing the movement of parties and of men.

La Fayette was received at Uniontown on the 26th May, 1825, and the next day he drove with Mr. Gallatin to Friendship Hill, where he passed the night and resumed his journey on the 28th. His mind was full of his triumphal progress, and of the fortunes of Greece, but he was allowed little rest even in the retirement of New Geneva. Crowds of people thronged Mr. Gallatin's house, and there could be little sensible or connected conversation in the midst of such excitement.

On the 10th June, Mr. Gallatin wrote to a friend: "We are here very retired, which suits me and my sons, but is not so agreeable to the ladies.... The uniformity of our life has been enlivened by the visit of our friend La Fayette; but he was in great hurry, and the Nation's Guest had but little time to give to his personal friends, that, too, encumbered even in my house with a prodigious crowd."

After a summer on the Monongahela, Mr. Gallatin took his family to Baltimore for the winter. Early in November he received a letter from Mr. Clay, then Secretary of State, offering him the position of representative of the United States at the proposed Congress of American republics at Panama. When Mr. Gallatin declined the post, on account of the climate and the language, Mr. Clay wrote again urging reconsideration. He said: "I think the mission the most important ever sent from this country, those only excepted which related to its independence and the termination of the late war. It will have objects which cannot fail to redound to the lasting fame of our negotiators, if they should be accomplished, as I think there is much reason to believe they may be." Mr. Gallatin thoroughly sympathized in the policy of strengthening the relations between the American republics, but persisted in declining the appointment. The opposition of his family seems to have been his principal difficulty.

[Sidenote: 1826.]

Towards the spring of 1826, a new demand was made on his services. President Adams had on assuming office recalled Mr. Rush from England to take charge of the Treasury Department, and had sent Mr. Rufus King to London. Mr. King's health gave way immediately after his arrival, and he was incapacitated for business. The Administration at once summoned Mr. Gallatin to Washington. The story is told in his own words, in a letter written on the 12th May, 1826:

"You will have seen by the newspapers that I was appointed minister to England. There are important negotiations now pending between that country and the United States, and the state of Mr. King's health was such that he had requested that, for that purpose, an extraordinary minister might be united to him. Under those circumstances I was requested and agreed to go as special minister. Before my nomination was sent to the Senate, Mr. King resigned altogether his place, and his resignation arrived to this country and was accepted. The President, wishing to entrust me alone with the negotiation, and unwilling to nominate at once a special minister for that purpose and an ordinary minister as successor to Mr. King, requested that I should go in the latter character, but with powers to negotiate, and with the understanding that I should be at liberty to return as soon as the negotiation was terminated, in same manner as if I had been appointed on a special mission. With that express understanding I have accepted. But my nomination has been made merely as successor to Mr. King, and the circumstances above mentioned are not publicly known. I now mention them to you in confidence in order to remove your apprehension of another long absence. This cannot last longer than a twelve-month."

The President appears to have intended that Mr. Gallatin should have ample discretionary power to act according to his best judgment in the negotiation; but when the instructions arrived, whether Mr. Clay was not inclined to allow such latitude, or whether Mr. Adams's ideas of discretionary power were different from Mr. Gallatin's, the latter found his position not satisfactory, and before sailing he wrote both to the President and to Mr. Clay letters of warm remonstrance, with suggestions of the changes needed to allow of freer action on his part. This done, he took his departure from New York, on July 1, 1826, accompanied by his wife and daughter, and arrived in London on the 7th August.

The negotiation now to take place was probably the most complicated and arduous ever trusted by the United States government in the hands of a single agent. It embraced not only those commercial questions which had been so often and so fruitlessly discussed, and which involved the whole system of British colonial and navigation laws, but also the troublesome disputes of boundary on our extreme north-eastern and north-western frontier, in Maine and Oregon; the settlement of a long outstanding claim for slaves carried away by British troops in contravention of the First Article of the Treaty of Ghent; and the continuance of the commercial convention negotiated by Mr. Gallatin in 1815 and extended in 1818 for ten years by him and Mr. Bush. All the principal notes and despatches which record from day to day the progress of the various negotiations have been published, and are to be found in the great collection of American State Papers; to them, students must refer for details, which belong to the region of history rather than to biography; here it is enough to describe some of the leading points of the situation and to give some slight idea of the manner in which Mr. Gallatin dealt with his difficulties.

Of these difficulties perhaps the greatest was that Lord Castlereagh was no longer head of the Foreign Office. Lord Castlereagh's political sins may have been many and dark, but towards the United States he was a wise and fair man. No one asked or expected friendship from a British minister of that day; all that America wished was to be treated by the English government with some degree of respect. Lord Castlereagh humored this weakness; his manners and his temper were excellent; his commercial views were much in advance of his time; he conceded with grace, and his refusals left no sting. When in 1822 he put an end to his own career, he was succeeded in the Foreign Office by George Canning, doubtless a greater man, but one whose temper was not gentle towards opposition, and whose old triumphs over embargo and non-intercourse had not left upon his imagination any profound respect for American character. Mr. Canning liked brilliant and aggressive statesmanship. He was not inclined to admit the new doctrines which had been announced by President Monroe in regard to the future exclusion of Europe from America; he felt that the power of the United States was a danger and a threat to England, and he would have been glad to strike out some new path which should relieve the commerce of England from its increasing dependence on America. Unfortunately for Mr. Gallatin, the very moment which Mr. Canning chose for experimenting on this subject was the moment when Gallatin was on his way to England in the summer of 1826. The object which he selected for experiment was the West India trade.

As has been already shown, the British government both in 1815 and in 1818 had declined to accept the American propositions on this subject. The trade between the United States and the West Indies was therefore left to be regulated by legislation as suited the interests of the parties. In proportion as England opened her colonial ports to American vessels, Congress relaxed the severity of its navigation law, and, in spite of incessant dispute about details, this process went on with favorable results as fast as public opinion in England would allow. There was only one drawback to the policy. In the multiplication of restrictive and retaliatory laws the intercourse became so embarrassed that no man could pretend to say what was and what was not permitted or forbidden.

In 1825 Parliament had undertaken a general revision of the colonial and navigation system, and several laws were adopted by which considerable changes had been made and liberal privileges granted to foreign nations on certain conditions. So far as applied to the United States, the condition was that she should place British shipping on the footing of the most favored nation.

The laws were intricate and impossible to understand without authoritative explanation. Mr. Clay and the committees of Congress considered the subject with care. The result was a decision to attempt nothing by way of legislation, but to give Mr. Gallatin authority to make such concessions as would probably secure a satisfactory arrangement by treaty. With these powers in his hand, not doubting that at length this annoying contest would be closed, Mr. Gallatin landed in England, and was met by the announcement that the British government, in consequence of the failure of Congress to fulfil the conditions of the Act of Parliament of July 5, 1825, had withdrawn the privileges conferred by that act; had prohibited, by order in council, all intercourse in American vessels between the British West Indies and the United States; and refused even to discuss the subject further.

In a small way this proceeding was only a repetition of Mr. Canning's abrupt rupture of negotiation in the case of Mr. Monroe's unratified treaty twenty years before. Orders in council had a peculiarly irritating meaning to American ears, and any negotiator would have had some excuse for losing his temper in such a case, but it must be agreed that on this occasion the American government in all its branches appeared with dignity and composure. Mr. Gallatin's notes were excellent in tone, forbearing in temper, and conclusive in argument; Mr. Clay was not less quiet and temperate. Between the two Mr. Canning did not appear equally well. He resorted to what was little better than hair-splitting on the meaning of the words "right" and "claim" as applied to the American trade with the colonies. "When it is contended," said he in a note of November 13, 1826, "that the '_right_' by which Great Britain prohibits foreign nations from trading with her colonies is the same '_right_' with that by which she might (if she thought fit) prohibit them from trading with herself, this argument (which is employed by the United States alone) implies that the special prohibition is a grievance to the United States, if not of the same _amount_, of the same _kind_, as the general prohibition would be. This is a doctrine which Great Britain explicitly denies."

In short, Mr. Canning was determined upon making one more effort to save the colonial system, and he preferred to do it in a way that would be remembered. Possibly his policy was sound; at all events he obtained by its means for England a very degrading apology from the next American Administration, although the number of his diplomatic triumphs over America was by that time no longer a matter of concern to him, and he and his ambition were then things of the past. His motives, in this instance, were not quite clear; what he avowed was the determination to ascertain by experiment whether the West Indies could be made independent of the United States by opening the colonial trade to all the rest of the world and prohibiting it to the United States alone. In the face of this attempt the American government had only one course to pursue: it must acquiesce and resume its retaliatory prohibition. This was accordingly done, without irritating language, and in excellent temper and taste. In regard to this branch of his negotiation, Mr. Gallatin's task therefore became simple; he had merely to obtain from the British government a distinct avowal of its determination to maintain this new policy against a direct offer of negotiation. He reserved this step until the very close of his mission, and his last words to Earl Dudley on the subject are worth quoting:

"The right of Great Britain to regulate the intercourse with her colonies is not questioned, and it is not usual for nations to make any great sacrifice for the sake of asserting abstract principles which are not contested. She is undoubtedly the only proper judge of what should be her commercial policy. The undersigned has not been fortunate enough to be able to discover what actual advantages she derives from the measures in which she perseveres in regard to the colonial intercourse. He has apprehended that considerations foreign to the question might continue to oppose obstacles to a proper understanding. Nothing has been omitted to remove those which might have arisen from misconceptions of the views and proceedings of the American government. It is gratifying to have received assurances that the decision of Great Britain was not influenced by any unfriendly feelings towards the United States. Their sentiments for Great Britain are those of amity and good-will; and their government is animated by a sincere desire to improve and strengthen the friendly relations of the two countries."

This sudden and unexpected blow, which instantly put an end to the most hopeful branch of Mr. Gallatin's intended negotiation, had a very mischievous effect upon the negotiation as a whole; practically and for the moment it annulled all his instructions. He had to act for himself, and he was much perplexed to form any theory of British motives which would serve to guide his course. He attempted to look at the matter from the British point of view, and wrote his first impressions to Mr. Clay on the 22d September, 1826:

"On three points we were perhaps vulnerable. 1. The delay in renewing the negotiation. 2. The omission of having revoked the restriction on the indirect intercourse when that of Great Britain had ceased. 3. Too long an adherence to the opposition to her right of laying protecting duties. This might have been given up as soon as the Act of 1825 had passed. These are the causes assigned for the late measures adopted towards the United States on that subject, and they have undoubtedly had a decisive effect as far as relates to the order in council, assisted as they were by the belief that our object was to compel this country to regulate the trade upon our own terms. But even this will not account for the refusal to negotiate and the apparent determination to exclude us altogether hereafter from a participation in the trade of the colonies. There is certainly an alteration in the disposition of this government since the year 1818, when I was last here. Lord Castlereagh and Mr. Robinson had it more at heart to cherish friendly relations than Mr. Canning and Mr. Huskisson. The difference may, however, be in the times rather than in the men. Treated in general with considerable arrogance till the last war, with great attention, if not respect, during the years that followed it, the United States are now an object of jealousy; and a policy founded on that feeling has been avowed."[160]

The first part of the above paragraph, down to the words "upon our own terms," was afterwards paraphrased by Mr. Van Buren as the ground of his celebrated deprecation to Great Britain, when giving his instructions, as Secretary of State, to Mr. McLane, as Minister to England. This fact was discovered by Mr. Benton, who has, in his "Thirty Years' View,"[161] printed that portion of the above despatch of 22d September, 1826, at the same time judiciously omitting the remainder, as had been done by Mr. Van Buren himself. This is not the place for making any comment either upon Mr. Van Buren's statesmanship or Mr. Benton's merits as a historian; but it is proper to point out that nothing in Mr. Gallatin's despatch could honestly be made to support the credit of either the one or the other.[162]

But Mr. Gallatin's remarks of September 22 were written before receiving the explanations of his own government, and they did not express a matured opinion. He was greatly perplexed to understand the real motives of Mr. Canning. On the 18th October, not one month after this despatch to Mr. Clay, he wrote a private letter to the President, giving some interesting information he had obtained on a short visit to Paris.[163] In this letter he mentioned having received information from a respectable quarter that "a few days before the publication of the order in council of July last, one of the King's ministers had complained to a confidential friend of the general tone of the American diplomacy towards England, still more as respected manner than matter, and added that it was time to show that this was felt and resented." Puzzled to know what could have caused such displeasure, Mr. Gallatin adds that he had looked through all the published correspondence and could find nothing with which the British government could have taken offence, unless it were Mr. Adams's instructions to Mr. Rush, with which that government had no concern. Even in this supposition, however, it soon appeared that he was mistaken; for on the 27th November he wrote to Mr. Clay that he had further ascertained the name of the "King's minister" before mentioned. It was no less a person than Mr. Canning himself; he had said that the language used by America was almost tantamount to a declaration of war; he had used the same language to Mr. Gallatin, and his grievance was not at all against the President or his officers, but against a certain Mr. Baylies, a member of Congress from Massachusetts, who, as chairman of a committee, had made a belligerent report to the House, which had never even been taken into consideration. "It is most undoubtedly that report which has given great offence, and I am apt to think that, though not the remote, or only, it was the immediate cause of the order in council."

Feeling his way in this tentative manner, always the most difficult task of a new minister in critical times, Mr. Gallatin approached the other subjects of negotiation. At the close of the year he wrote to the President, sketching the state of each disputed point and earnestly pressing for instructions. This letter closes with the following unusually severe remarks:

[Sidenote: 1827.]

"Although all my faculties are exerted, and it is far from being the first time, in trying to accommodate differences and to remove causes of rupture, it is impossible for me not to see and feel the temper that prevails here towards us. It is perceptible in every quarter and on every occasion, quite changed from what it was in 1815-1821; nearly as bad as before the last war, only they hate more and despise less, though they still affect to conceal hatred under the appearance of contempt. I would not say this to any but to you and your confidential advisers, and I say it not in order to excite corresponding feelings, but because I think that we must look forward and make those gradual preparations which will make us ready for any emergency, and which may be sufficient to preserve us from the apprehended danger.... I must say, after my remarks on the temper here, that I have been personally treated with great, by Mr. Canning with marked, civility."

Thus difficulties thickened round him as he advanced. The West India negotiation could not take place; there was no hope for the navigation of the St. Lawrence; there was no chance of fixing a definitive boundary in Oregon; even to make the preliminary arrangements for compromising the dispute about the Maine boundary would be laborious and arduous; the only point settled was that of payment in a gross sum for captured slaves.

ALBERT GALLATIN TO JAMES GALLATIN.

LONDON, 13th January, 1827.

... We continue all well, and I anticipate nothing that can prevent our taking our departure about the middle of June. All that I can possibly do here must be terminated by that time, provided the instructions I have asked on some points be such as not to render another reference to Washington necessary. I have written to the Department of State accordingly, and asked for leave to return by that time, to which I presume no objection will be made, as it was explicitly understood that I should remain no longer than the pending negotiations required, and Mr. Adams's conjecture that they would occupy about twelve months is confirmed. I have written to him a private letter by the last packet, most earnestly entreating him both to direct the necessary instructions to be sent and to grant me leave to return. As you know him, and he has always shown kindness to you, I wish you would join your solicitations to mine, either in writing or by waiting in person on him. There are many things which you may say or explain showing the importance of my return to my family. As to myself, whether it is the result of age (you know that in a fortnight I will enter my sixty-seventh year) or increased anxiety about you and your brother, my mind is enervated, and I feel that a longer absence would have a most serious effect upon me. As it is, though my health is tolerable, I hardly dare to hope that I will see you again. Nor will my return be any public loss. The United States want here a man of considerable talent, but he must be younger than I am and capable of going through great labor with more facility than I now possess. This is at all times the most laborious foreign mission. It is at this time, owing to the negotiations, one of the most laborious public offices. I cannot work neither as long nor do as much work in the same time as formerly. To think and to write, to see the true state of the question, and to state it, not with eloquence, but with perspicuity, all that formerly was done instantaneously and with ease is now attended with labor, requires time, and is not performed to my satisfaction. I believe that Mr. Lawrence will prove a useful public servant. Yet I have missed and do miss your assistance every day. I did not like French diplomacy; I cannot say that I admire that of this country. Some of the French statesmen occasionally say what is not true (cordon sanitaire); here they conceal the truth. The temper also towards us is bad. After all, though it is necessary to argue well, you may argue forever in vain; strength and the opinion of your strength are the only efficient weapons. We must either shut ourselves in our shell, as was attempted during the Jefferson policy, and I might say mine, or we must support our rights and pretensions by assuming at home a different attitude. I think that we are now sufficiently numerous and rich for that purpose, and that with skill our resources would be found adequate. But that is a subject requiring more discussion than can be encompassed in a letter. I fear that you will find this written in a too desponding mood; and I do not wish you to despond as relates to yourself.... What you may, or rather ought to, do about our lands, it belongs to you to decide. They are yours and Albert's, and you must consider them as such, keep or sacrifice, since there is no chance of a favorable sale at present, as you shall think best. It is a troublesome and unproductive property, which has plagued me all my life. I could not have vested my patrimony in a more unprofitable manner....

ALBERT GALLATIN TO JAMES GALLATIN.

LONDON, 29th January, 1827.

... I do not understand [in your letter] what relates to Mr. Clay's letter and mine on colonial intercourse, and why they should be brought in competition. They were written for different purposes, mine in defence of the general ground taken by America and of her claims on that subject, addressed, too, to Mr. Canning, and on that account more guarded and cautious; that of Mr. Clay principally in defence of the conduct of the Administration on the subject since he came in office, and written without apprehension that it might be answered. I was but indifferently satisfied with my own or with the cause I had to contend for; and that of Mr. Clay, though too long and too hastily written, was better than I had expected. He has great talent, and has vastly improved since 1814. His fault is that he is devoured with ambition, and in all his acts never can detach himself and their effect on his popularity from the subject on which he is called to act. But whilst serving in his Department it is unpleasant to be placed in opposition to him.

J. Q. ADAMS TO GALLATIN.[164]

WASHINGTON, 20th March, 1827.

DEAR SIR,--I have received from you several very kind and friendly letters, for which the unremitted pressure of public business during the session of Congress has not permitted me to make the due return of acknowledgment. The march of time, which stays not for the convenience or the humors of men, has closed the existence of that body for the present, and they have left our relations with Great Britain precisely where they were.

The sudden and unexpected determination of the British government to break off all negotiation concerning the colonial trade, and the contemporaneous measure of interdicting the vessels of the United States from all their ports in the West Indies, as well as many others, has taken us so much by surprise that a single short session of Congress has not been sufficient to mature the system by which we may most effectively meet this new position assumed by the colonial monopoly of Great Britain....

From the state of your negotiation upon the other subjects of interest in discussion between the two governments, as exhibited in your latest despatches and letters, there is little encouragement to expect a satisfactory result regarding them. There are difficulties in the questions themselves,--difficulties still more serious in the exorbitant pretensions of Great Britain upon every point,--difficulties, to all appearances, insuperable in the _temper_ which Great Britain now brings into the management of the controversy. For the causes of this present soreness of feeling we must doubtless look deeper than to the report of a committee of our House of Representatives or to the assertion by the late President that the American continents were no more subject to future colonization from Europe. As the assertion of this principle is an attitude which the American hemisphere must assume, it is one which no European has the right to question; and if the inference drawn from it of danger to _existing_ colonies has any foundation, it can only be on the contingency of a war, which we shall by all possible means avoid. As to the report of Mr. Baylies, if Mr. Canning has not enough upon his hands to soothe the feelings of foreign nations for what he says in Parliament himself, he would think it passing strange to be called to account for offences of that character committed by Mr. Brougham or Mr. Hume. He surely cannot be so ill informed of the state of things existing here as not to know that Mr. Baylies is not the man by whom the sentiments or opinions of this or of the last Administration of the government of the United States were or are wont to be expressed. The origin, rise, and progress of this "Oregon Territory Committee," of which Mr. Baylies became at last the chairman, is perhaps not known even to you; but you may remember it was the engine by means of which Mr. Jonathan Russell's famous duplicate letter was brought before the House of Representatives and the nation, and that incident will give you a clue to the real purposes for which that committee was raised and to the spirit manifested in the report of Mr. Baylies.

Upon the whole, if the same inflexible disposition which you have found prevailing upon the subject of the colonial trade, and of which indications so distinct have been given upon the boundary questions and the navigation of the St. Lawrence, should continue unabated, our last resource must be to agree upon the renewal for ten years of the Convention of 1818. This would probably _now_ obtain the advice and consent of the Senate for ratification. On the colonial trade question the opposition here have taken the British side, and their bill in the Senate was concession unqualified but by a deceptive show of future resistance. But you must not conclude that the same spirit would be extended to anything in the shape of concession which you might send to us in a treaty. One inch of ground yielded on the northwest coast,--one step backward from the claim to the navigation of the St. Lawrence,--one hair's-breadth of compromise upon the article of impressment, would be certain to meet the reprobation of the Senate. In this temper of the parties, all we can hope to accomplish will be to adjourn controversies which we cannot adjust, and say to Britain, as the Abbé Bernis said to Cardinal Fleuri: Monseigneur, j'attendrai.

Your instructions will be forwarded in season that you may be subjected to no delay in bringing the negotiation to an issue; but I regret exceedingly the loss to the public of your continued services. The political and commercial system of Great Britain is undergoing great changes. It will certainly not stop at the stage where it now stands. The interdicting order in council of last July itself has the air of a start backwards by Mr. Huskisson from his own system to the old navigation laws. His whole system is experimental against deep-rooted prejudice and a delusion of past experience. I could earnestly have wished that it might have been consistent with your views to remain a year or two longer in England, and I should have indulged a hope that in the course of that time some turn in the tide of affairs might have occurred which would have enabled us, with your conciliatory management of debatable concerns, to place our relations with Great Britain upon a more stable and friendly foundation.

* * * * *

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.

[Sidenote: 1828.]

Altogether, if your conventions are ratified, I shall indulge a strong hope that our relations with Great Britain generally will become more friendly than they have lately been. But I know only that I shall feel most sensibly the loss of your presence at London, and can form no more earnest wish than that your successor may acquire the same influence of reason and good temper which you did exercise, and that it may be applied with as salutary effect to the future discussions between the two governments.

I remain, with great respect and attachment, your friend.

* * * * *

With this letter of President Adams the story of Mr. Gallatin's diplomatic career may fitly close. Such evidence leaves nothing to be said in regard to his qualities as a diplomate. In that career he stood first among the men of his time. He never again returned to Europe, and henceforward his public life may be considered as ended.

He had, however, still one duty to perform. The President, unable to persuade him to remain in London, requested him to prepare on the part of the United States government the argument in regard to the North-Eastern boundary, which was to be submitted to the King of the Netherlands as arbitrator. This excessively tedious and laborious duty occupied all his time for the next two years, and resulted in a bulky volume, which may be found among our public documents. While preparing it he was obliged to pass a portion of his time in Washington, where he found politics less and less to his taste. The election of 1828 terminated the long sway of the old Republican party, and if what he saw about him had not convinced Mr. Gallatin that his opinions and methods belonged to a past era, instinct must have taught him that his career and that of his party had best close together.

GALLATIN TO HIS WIFE.

WASHINGTON, 16th December, 1828.

[Sidenote: 1829.]

... I have used every possible endeavor to terminate our business earlier than the day on which it must necessarily be concluded; I have attended to nothing else, and owe now thirty and more visits, yet I do not expect to have done before the 1st of January. I cannot rise early, the days are short, the details very complex, new materials coming in to the last moment, a great mass of papers to read, selections to make, several transcribers and draughtsmen to direct, and, independent of age, the whole much retarded by my being obliged to abstain from writing. Yet, though I have not worked so hard, the use of the pen excepted, since I was in the Treasury, I continue to enjoy perfect health.... Notwithstanding their triumphant majority, the prospect of the conquering party is not very flattering. The object which alone united them is accomplished, and they dare not now approach the tariff or any other measure of importance on which they would immediately divide and break off. Nor is there any man around whom they can rally, the pretensions being numerous and discordant. The state of politics is better in reference to the external relations of the country than during the existence of the Federal and Republican parties; but it is truly deplorable with respect to the internal concerns of the nation....

GALLATIN TO BADOLLET.

NEW YORK, March 26, 1829.

I duly received, my dear friend, your letter of 10th January last, and it would have been immediately answered had not an accident deprived me of the use of my right hand. Rest has now partly restored it; but I am compelled to employ generally an amanuensis, and to write myself only on special occasions....

I hope that, with your moderate wants, you find yourself now comparatively at ease. After much anxiety, I find that our children must be left to cut their own way and to provide for themselves; and I have no other uneasiness respecting them than so far as concerns their health, that of Albert and Frances being extremely delicate, so much so, indeed, as may perhaps compel me to change once more my place of residence for one more southerly and favorable to their lungs. With great indolence and an anxious wish to be rooted somewhere, I was destined to be always on the wing. It was an ill-contrived plan to think that the banks of the Monongahela, where I was perfectly satisfied to live and die in retirement, could be borne by the female part of my family or by children brought up at Washington and Paris, and, unfortunately for them, in an artificial situation which has produced expectations that can never be realized. Albert was the only one who was happy, and I was obliged to break up a comfortable establishment and to attempt a new one in one of our seaports with means inadequate to our support. Particular circumstances have made Baltimore, which was my choice, objectionable in some respects; and on my return from England, in conformity with the natural wishes of my wife, whose respectable mother, aged eighty-five, is still alive, I settled here. What I may now do is quite uncertain. To Washington I must proceed in a few days on the business of the North-East boundary, which is committed to my care, and will be detained there till the 1st of July. I must add that my public engagements in relation to that important question will cease with the end of this year.

I am not pleased with the present aspect of public affairs, still less with that of the public mind. Perhaps old age makes me querulous. I care little what party and who is in power; but it seems to me that now and for the last eight years people and leaders have been much less anxious about the public service and the manner in which it should be performed than by whom the country should be governed. This feeling appears to me to be growing; and at this moment every movement seems already to be directed towards the next Presidential election, and that not on account of any preference of a system of public measures over another, but solely in relation to persons, or at best to sectional feelings. Amongst other symptoms displeasing to me, I may count the attempt of the West, and particularly of your State, to claim the sovereignty and exclusive right to the public lands. I wish they did of right belong to the several States and not to the United States. But the claim is contrary to positive compact and to common justice, any departure from which, either in our domestic or external policy, is the most fatal injury that can be inflicted on our political institutions, on the reputation of the country, and indeed on the preservation of the Union. But we are going off the scene; I think that we have discharged our duties honestly, and the next generation must provide for itself....

* * * * *

For one moment, however, it seemed possible that Mr. Gallatin might again be employed abroad. The King of the Netherlands could not be expected to arbitrate without assistance and advice, and it was peculiarly important that Mr. Gallatin should be at hand for that purpose. Mr. Van Buren's conscience appears to have been somewhat tender on the subject of Mr. Gallatin since the secret manipulation of the Vice-Presidency in 1824; and after General Jackson had been chosen President in November, 1828, and events had marked out Mr. Van Buren as highly influential with him, that gentleman seems to have intimated that he considered Mr. Gallatin to have claims upon his good-will. Mr. Gallatin's eldest son was then eager for a diplomatic position, and his father authorized him to tell Mr. Van Buren, and later wrote himself to say, that he would accept the mission to France, if offered to him, although he was not willing to return to England or even to be Secretary of State. Unfortunately, Mr. Van Buren soon found that he had no power to dispose of his patronage as Secretary, and in the frightful chaos which followed the inauguration of General Jackson the old servants of the government instantly saw that new principles and new practices left no place for them in the national service.

GALLATIN TO HIS WIFE.

WASHINGTON, 2d May, 1829.

... I have made more progress this week than all the time since my arrival. I was not very well, and felt dispirited. My cold has now entirely left me, and I can see as through a vista the end of my labors.... After next week most of the writing will be over and my hand may rest; but there will be correcting, altering, collating maps and evidence, &c. You call me a pack-horse, but I am used to it, and might, as relates to the public, have taken for my motto, _Sic vos non vobis_.... I will be more than delighted to see Frances, if she can come.... As to beaux, I know of none but Van Buren, and he is, I think, a little crestfallen....

16th May, 1829.

... I have this day finished dictating to Albert our argument,--two hundred pages of his writing. Mr. Preble promises to return the whole to me on Monday with his proposed emendations, which will not be either long or important; and I hope to have it ready for the President's inspection by Tuesday.... In giving my love to Maria, tell her that she and Miss Harrison must be out of their senses to think that I can have any influence in placing a clerk or do anything else here; but ... upon every occasion I have freely expressed my entire disapprobation of the system of removal for political opinions, particularly as applied to clerks, inspectors, &c., of which there had been no instance since the commencement of this government....

23d May, 1829.

... Our argument is in the press, and I have every reason to believe that we will have terminated all that remains to be done for the present by the 1st of next month. I am well, though weak, and you need not fear for me the effect of the Washington climate either physically or politically. There are some things to which I am used, and which do not affect me much or long. Was I not postponed to make room for Robert Smith, even when in my prime and with Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Madison to sustain me? And most certainly, whatever may be the claims of age and services, I had none whatever on the present Administration. Age, also, so advanced as mine, is not a recommendation; and we must make room for younger men....

WASHINGTON, 8th November, 1829.

... We came here without accident.... I work as much as, but not more than, I can well go through, but my progress is slow; our statement will be nearly as long as one volume of Frances's novels, and it is no trifling task to execute a piece of close reasoning and condensed facts of that length, which is ultimately intended for the public eye and will be a national and perhaps a public European paper. I do not mean to let it go to the press till corrected and made as faultless as I can, and am more afraid of a failure in the style than in the matter.... We dined yesterday at the President's. He is very cordial, and did unbend himself entirely. I have avoided every allusion to myself, his Cabinet, and the removals. I am told, by one who ought to know, that the Cabinet is divided, Ingham, Branch, and Berrien being the moderate party. I suppose that the division at present is only as to removals, but with an eye to the next Presidential election; and I do not know whether we must not become Jacksonites in preference to intended successors. Van Buren is gone to Richmond to court Virginia....

29th November, 1829.

... I got a cold last Tuesday.... The weather was so bad that I thought it best to keep in the house.... I have lost two dinners by my confinement, one at Mr. ---- and the other at the President's, where Albert went. This was a splendid affair; the East room, which, notwithstanding the abuse of Mr. Adams, was but an unfurnished barn, is, under our more Republican Administration, besides the Brussels carpeting and silk curtains, &c., adorned with four immense French looking-glasses, the largest Albert ever saw, and, by the by, not necessary in a dining-room; three splendid English crystal chandeliers, &c. Fifty guests sitting at dinner, one hundred candles and lamps, silver plate of every description, &c., and for a queen, Peggy O'Neal,[165] led in by Mr. Vaughan as the head of the Diplomatic Corps, and sitting between him and the President. All which I mention that, having had with me your share of the vanities and grandeurs of this world, you may be quite satisfied that we were not indebted for them to any particular merit of ours; and that the loss of popularity, which we perhaps regret too much (for as to the vanities I know that you care no more about them than I do), is no more an object of astonishment than the manner in which it is acquired....