Page:Henry Adams' History of the United States Vol. 3.djvu/433

1807. to England. From a Whig point of view Lord Howick's order violated the rules of political economy and common-sense; not to be defended or excused, it equalled in violence the aggressions of Pitt, and in bad faith rivalled the deceptions of Napoleon. Yet this measure was the last act of a Ministry more liberal than England was destined to see again for twenty years. Hardly had Lord Grenville made this concession to Tory prejudice when the old King, nearly blind and on the verge of insanity, clinging to his prejudices with the persistence of age, seized the pretext of some small concession to the Roman Catholics and turned the Whigs out of his councils. March 26, 1807, Lord Grenville and Lord Howick announced to the two Houses of Parliament their dismissal from office.

If the friendly Whigs, after imposing on the United States such a treaty, had thought themselves still obliged to lop off another main limb of American commerce, which Pitt had spared, the Tories were not likely to rest until they had put an end to American neutral commerce altogether. This result was foreshadowed by Spencer Perceval and Lord Castlereagh in their speeches on Lord Howick's order, and was the end to which the legislation and public opinion of England had pointed for years. The time for negotiation had gone by, and nothing remained for the United States but a trial of strength.

For this final test Jefferson was ready. Congress