1805.
CABINET VACILLATIONS.
57
should have advanced so far without showing a sign that he was prepared for the next step. Knowing as early as March, 1805, that his plans were defeated, and that he might expect a repulse from Spain and France, he selected a new minister to succeed Pinckney at Madrid. This diplomatist, whose career was to be as futile if not as noisy as that of his predecessor from South Carolina, was James Bowdoin of Massachusetts, son of a celebrated governor of that State. Jefferson wrote privately to him, April 27, announcing the appointment; and the tone of the letter implied that in the month's interval since the arrival of Talleyrand's manifesto the President's pacific views had suffered a change.
- "Our relations with that nation are vitally interesting," he wrote. [1] "That they should be of a peaceable and friendly character has been our most earnest desire. Had Spain met us with the same disposition, our idea was that her existence on this hemisphere and ours should have rested on the same bottom, should have swum or sunk together. We want nothing of hers, and we want no other nation to possess what is hers; but she has met our advances with jealousy, secret malice, and ill-faith. Our patience under this unworthy return of disposition is now on its last trial, and the issue of what is now depending between us will decide whether our relations with her are to be sincerely friendly or permanently hostile. I still wish, and would cherish, the former, but have ceased to expect it."
Jefferson had the faculty,
- ↑ Jefferson's Writings (Ford), viii. 350.
