in consideration of the distance, to clear for blockaded ports on the chance of the blockade being removed before they arrived; and finally that the direct trade between the West Indies and Europe should be thrown open to American commerce without requiring it to pass through a port of the United States.
In return Madison offered to the British government the unconditional surrender of deserters by sea and land, together with certain precautions against the smuggling of articles contraband of war.
Although Madison pressed the necessity of an immediate understanding on these points, he did so in his usual temperate and conciliatory manner; while Merry frankly avowed that he could give no hopes of such propositions being listened to. He did this the more decisively because Congress seemed about to take the matter of impressments into its own hands, and was already debating a Bill for the protection of seamen by measures which tended to hostilities. Madison disavowed responsibility for the legislation, although he defended it in principle.[1] Merry contented himself for the time by saying that if the United States government sought their remedy in municipal law, the matter would immediately cease to be a subject of negotiation.
Thus, in one short month, the two governments were brought to what the British minister supposed to be the verge of rupture. That any government should
- ↑ Merry to Hawkesbury, Jan. 20, 1804; Jan. 30, 1804; MSS. British Archives.
