am still in hopes you will accept it; it is impossible to let you stay at home while the public has so much need of talents." In regard to the treaty he said little; but what he did say was more severe than any criticism yet made to others. "Depend on it, my dear Sir, that it will be considered as a hard treaty when it is known. The British commissioners appear to have screwed every Article as far as it would bear,—to have taken everything and yielded nothing." He urged Monroe, if nothing better could be got," to back out of the negotiation "as well as he could, letting it die insensibly, and substituting some informal agreement until a more yielding temper should rise. Next the President wrote privately to Bowdoin, his wandering minister to Spain, to whom Armstrong had shut the doors of the legation at Paris for betraying its secrets, and who in return was abusing Armstrong with recriminations. If a quarrel should arise with England, it might at least be made to bring Florida again within reach.
- "I have but little expectation," wrote the President to Bowdoin,[1] "that the British government will retire from their habitual wrongs in the impressment of our seamen, and am certain that without that we will never tie up our hands by treaty from the right of passing a non-importation, or non-intercourse Act to make it her interest to become just. This may bring on a war of commercial restrictions. To show, however, the sincerity of our desire for conciliation, I have suspended
- ↑ Jefferson to Bowdoin, April 2, 1807; Works, v. 63.
