Page:Henry Adams' History of the United States Vol. 2.djvu/417

398 Merry immediately called on the Secretary of State, and asked him for some assurance that might serve to quiet the apprehensions which his Government would feel on reading the Act. Madison could give none, except that the President would probably not exercise for the present his discretionary powers. As for the words, "any trespass or tort," Madison frankly avowed "he could not but confess they were meant to imply the impressment of any individual whatsoever from on board an American vessel, the exercise of which pretended right on the part of his Majesty's officers was a matter, he said, which the sense of the people at large would never allow the government of this country to acquiesce in."

To this announcement Merry replied in substance that the right was one which would certainly never be abandoned by his Government; and there the matter rested at the close of Jefferson's first term. Madison assured the British minister that the authority granted to the President by Congress over foreign ships of war in American waters would not at present be enforced. He went even a step further toward conciliation. The Legislature of Virginia was induced quietly to modify the Act which had hitherto offered so much encouragement to the desertion of British seamen.

The second threatening measure was a Resolution of the Senate, March 2, 1805, calling upon the Secretary