Page:Henry Adams' History of the United States Vol. 2.djvu/439

420 right of search, and complete freedom in the colonial trade, as the conditions on which the friendship of the United States could be preserved. The announcement of President Jefferson's high tone was accompanied by the British minister's account of his own social mortifications by the President and the Secretary of State; of the Senate's refusal to approve the fifth article of Rufus King's boundary convention, in order to attack the British right of navigating the Mississippi; and by drafts of bills pending in Congress, under which any British admiral, even though it were Nelson himself, who should ever have taken a seaman out of an American vessel, was to be arrested in the streets of the first American port where he might go ashore, and to suffer indefinite imprisonment among thieves and felons in the calaboose.

May 30, 1804, Monroe had his first interview with Lord Harrowby. In such cases the new secretary, about to receive a foreign minister, commonly sent for the late correspondence, in order to learn something about the subjects on which he was to have an opinion. Beyond a doubt Lord Harrowby had on his table the despatches of Merry, written between November and April, which he probably finished reading at about the moment when Monroe was announced at the door.

Under such circumstances, Monroe reported to his Government that Lord Harrowby's manners were designedly unfriendly; his reception was rough, his comments on the Senate's habit of mutilating treaties