Page:Henry Adams' History of the United States Vol. 2.djvu/301

282 was such as the President was bound to take up, and he knew that the only chance of carrying the points which the President had at heart was in energetic action. For three years he had watched the peremptory tone of France and England at Madrid, and had been assured by the common voice of his diplomatic colleagues that threats alone could extort action from the Spanish government. He had seen the Prince of Peace, after resorting to one subterfuge after another, repeatedly forced to cower before the two great robbers who were plundering Spain, and he explained to Madison the necessity of imitating their example if the President meant that Spain should cower before the United States. Perhaps he felt that Godoy looked on the President at Washington as the jackal of Bonaparte, and he may have wished to prove that America could act alone. His eager ambition to make himself as important as the representatives of France and England in the eyes of Europe might imply vanity, but rested also on logic.

The first result of this energetic tone was not what Pinckney had hoped. Cevallos was outwardly unmoved; Pinckney's violence only caused him to lay aside that courtesy which was the usual mark of Spanish manners. His official notes were in outward form still civil enough, but in two or three conversations Pinckney listened to a series of remarks as blunt as though Lord Harrowby were the speaker. Pinckney reported to Madison the tenor of