Page:Henry Adams' History of the United States Vol. 2.djvu/280

1804. with the printed Act in his hand, and overwhelmed Madison with reproaches, which he immediately afterward supported by a note so severe as to require punishment, and so able as to admit of none. He had at first, he said, regarded as "an atrocious libel" on the United States government the assertion that it had made a law which usurped the rights of Spanish sovereignty; yet such was the case. He gave a short and clear abstract of the evidence which refuted the claim to West Florida, and closed by requesting that the law be annulled.

Madison could neither maintain the law nor annul it; he could not even explain it away. Gallatin told the President six months afterward, that "the public mind is altogether unprepared for a declaration that the terms and object of the Mobile Act had been misunderstood by Spain; for every writer, without a single exception, who has written on the subject seems to have understood the Act as Spain did; it has been justified by our friends on that ground." Yet Jefferson was not prepared to maintain and defend the Act in its full assertions of authority, after accepting Louisiana without asking for West Florida. Madison wrote a letter of complaint to Livingston at Paris, explaining, as already quoted, the reasons