Page:American Historical Review, Volume 12.djvu/194

 184 Conimiinications " Nor is Captain Mahan without injustice in his treatment of the controversy which terminated in the dismissal of Jackson, the British minister. No minister had ever gone so far in insolence, and no self- respecting government could have done other than dismiss him." Insolence, doubtless, may be cause for dismissal; the degree that demands it is matter of opinion. Mr. Hunt says Jackson's insolence reached it; an opinion about which I am not solicitous to differ. But in an historical magazine, should it be thought necessary to express an opinion, the opinion should speak to the facts. The fact is that our Government dismissed Jackson, not on a general charge of insolence, but on the specific ground that in his letters to it he had made, and after- wards repeated, a specific implication, which was false and insolent. The American letter ran thus : " I abstain. Sir, from making any particular animadversions on several irrelevant and improper allusions in your letter. . . . But it would be improper to conclude the few observations to which I purposely limit myself, without adverting to your repetition of a language implying a knowledge on the part of this Government that the instructions of your predecessor did not authorize the arrangement formed by him." The abstention, and the limitation, here italicized by me, exclude other grounds for action than the language construed by Madison to imply the meaning which he repelled; and the letter of dismissal rests directly, and solely, upon the same ground : " language reiterating, and even aggravating, the same gross insinuation." After a very diligent examination of the correspondence. I elaborated in the book under review a demonstration that Jackson's language, carefully and fairly scrutinized, did not imply the statement put into his mouth. My conclusion was expressed in these words : " Prepossession in reading, and proneness to angry misconception, must be inferred in the conduct of the American side of this discussion ; for another even graver instance," etc. (p. 226). This is simply a statement of opinion, with which any one is at liberty to differ; but, as an opinion, it relates not to a general charge of inso- lence, but to the specific reason alleged by the American Government for its action, which I endeavored to show was unfounded. The opin- ions advanced by me currently in my account of the transaction, and summarized in the above extract, constitute my injustice in this matter to the administration of Madison; that injustice, if it exists, should have been indicated, npt by a general sweeping mention, but by the statement that the facts contained in my demonstration failed to sustain the judg- ment that " prepossession in reading and proneness to angry misconcep- tion must be inferred from the American conduct of the discussion." From first to last the action of the American Government was based on a specific implication, alleged to be in Jackson's letter. If that impli- cation was in the letter, fairly and dispassionately read, I have been unjust; if it was not in the letter, but, as I have asserted, and I think