Page:Henry Adams' History of the United States Vol. 4.djvu/401

1808. was, he said, a mistake; and the inferences drawn in regard to President Jefferson were wholly erroneous:—


 * "Eight years of the most intimate intercourse, during which not an act, nor hardly a thought, respecting the foreign relations of America was concealed, enable me confidently to say that Mr. Jefferson never had in that respect any other object in view but the protection of the rights of the United States against every foreign aggression or injury, from whatever nation it proceeded, and has in every instance observed toward all the belligerents the most strict justice and the most scrupulous impartiality."

This denial was hardly necessary. The despatches themselves plainly showed that Erskine, having set his heart on effecting a treaty, used every argument that could have weight with Englishmen, and dwelt particularly upon the point—which he well knew to be a dogma of British politics—that President Jefferson had French sympathies, whereas Madison's sympathies were English. If Erskine had been a Tory, he would have known better than to suppose that Perceval's acts were in any way due to Jefferson or his prejudices; but the British minister wished to employ all the arguments that could aid his purpose; and to do him justice, he used without stint that argument which his British instincts told him would be most convincing,—the single word, War.