2653. ENGLAND, Jefferson and.—[continued].
I told [Mr. Erskine] I
was going out of the Administration and,
therefore, might say to him things which I
would not do were I to remain in. I wished
to correct an error which I, at first, thought
his Government above being led into from
newspapers, but I apprehend they had
adopted it. This was the supposed partiality
of the Administration and particularly myself
in favor of France and against England. I
observed that when I came into the Administration,
there was nothing I so much desired
as to be on a footing of intimate friendship
with England; that I knew as long as she
was our friend no enemy could hurt; that
I would have sacrificed much to have effected
it, and, therefore, wished Mr. King to have
continued there as a favorable instrument;
that if there had been an equal disposition on
their part, I thought it might have been effected;
for although the question of impressments
was difficult on their side and insuperable
with us, yet had that been the sole question,
we might have shoved along in the hope
of some compromise; that indeed there was a
ground of accommodation which his ministry
had on two occasions yielded to for a short
time, but retracted; that during the administration
of Mr. Addington and the short one
of Mr. Fox, I had hoped such a friendship
practicable, but that during all other administrations,
I had seen a spirit so adverse to us
that I now despaired of any change. That he
might judge from the communications now
before Congress whether there had been any
partiality to France to whom, he would see,
we had never made the proposition to revoke
the Embargo immediately, which we did to
England, and, again, that we had remonstrated
strongly to them on the style of Mr.
Champagny's letter, but had not to England
on that of Canning, equally offensive; that
the letter of Canning, now reading to Congress,
was written in the high ropes and
would be stinging to every American breast.—
The Anas.
Ford ed., i, 336.
(Nov. 1808)
