Page:Henry Adams' History of the United States Vol. 4.djvu/174

164 demand by extending the required redress over all cases of impressment; but meanwhile General Dearborn had left Washington for New York, and was not told of the change. So it happened that when in October the Federalist newspapers began to attack Jefferson, on the authority of the English press, for coupling the subject of general impressment with the attack on the "Chesapeake," Dearborn, who chanced to be in Massachusetts, denied the charge; and on his authority the Republican newspapers asserted that the alleged instructions had not been given. This denial created no little confusion among Republicans, who could not understand why the instructions had been changed, or on what ground the Administration meant to defend them.

In truth, the change had been an afterthought, founded on the idea that as abandonment of impressments was a sine qua non in the commercial negotiation, and a point on which the Government meant inflexibly to insist, it should properly be made a sine qua non in this or any other agreement. This decision had been made in July, with knowledge that England would rather fight than yield a point so vital to her supposed interests. In December, on hearing that Canning refused to yield, the President told Erskine that the sine qua non, so formally adopted, would be abandoned.

That conduct in appearance so vacillating should