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334 on condition that England should withdraw the Orders in Council. In the situation of English feeling such an offer was almost an invitation to insult, and Pinkney would have gladly left it untouched. He tried to evade the necessity of putting it in writing; but Canning was inexorable. From week to week Pinkney postponed the unpleasant task. Not until August 23 did he write the note which should have been written in June. No moment could have been more unfortunate; for only two days before, Arthur Wellesley had defeated Junot at Vimieiro; and August 30 Junot capitulated at Cintra. The delirium of England was higher than ever before or since.

September 23 Canning replied. Beginning with a refusal to admit the President's advance, his note went on to discuss its propriety. "His Majesty," it said, "cannot consent to buy off that hostility which America ought not to have extended to him, at the expense of a concession made, not to America, but to France." Canning was a master of innuendo; and every sentence of his note hinted that he believed Jefferson to be a tool of Napoleon; but in one passage he passed the bounds of official propriety:—


 * "The Government of the United States is not to be informed that the Berlin Decree of Nov. 21, 1806, was the practical commencement of an attempt, not merely to check or impair the prosperity of Great Britain, but utterly to annihilate her political existence through the