Albert Gallatin
the pending negotiations, and unwilling to make the two nominations of
minister and envoy, proposed to Mr. Gallatin to take the post of
minister, with powers to negotiate, and liberty to return when the
negotiations should be finished. Personal expenses at London were so
great that the post of resident minister was ruinous. Mr. Adams promised
Mr. Gallatin _carte blanche_ as to his instructions. But instead of
latitude and discretionary power he received at New York voluminous
directions which he engaged faithfully to execute, while regretting that
they had not been made known to him sooner. Nevertheless, in the three
days which intervened before his sailing, he wrote to Mr. Clay a lucid
statement of the points in issue, and mentioned the modifications he
desired. The points were: 1. The northeastern boundary. Upon this he was
only authorized to obtain a reference of the subject to a direct
negotiation at Washington. He asked consent, in case it should be
desirable, to open a negotiation on this point at London. Should Great
Britain refuse to open a negotiation at either place, or to agree to a
joint statement, then he was not to be bound to propose an immediate
reference to a third power. 2. The boundary west of the Stony Mountains.
The instructions limited British continuance on settlements south of the
49th parallel to five years. Mr. Gallatin thought this insufficient, and
proposed fifteen years. 3. The St. Lawrence navigation, and the
intercourse with Canada, as to which he suggested alternate plans. 4.
Colonial trade, on which he asked precise instructions as to what was
desired. To the President he complained of his instructions as 'of the
most peremptory nature, leaving no discretion on unimportant points, and
making of him a mere machine,' and he requested that it be officially
announced to him 'that the instructions were intended to guide but not
absolutely to bind him.' He was not afraid of incurring responsibility
where discretion was allowed, but he would not do it in the face of
strict and positive injunctions. Mr. Gallatin sailed from New York with
his wife and daughter July 1, 1826. Mr. William Beach Lawrence, then a
youth, accompanied him as his secretary. They reached London on August
7.
Canning was then at the head of the foreign office, and the temper of
the ministry was not that of Castlereagh and Wellington. Mr. Gallatin
did not like French diplomacy, nor did he admire that of England. He
wrote to his son: 'Some of the French statesmen occasionally say what is
not true; here (in London) they conceal the truth.' But while in
diplomacy he found strength and the opinion of that strength to be the
only weapons, he felt satisfaction that the country could support its
rights and pretensions by assuming a different attitude. In the course
of the negotiations Mr. Gallatin learned that one of the king's
ministers had complained of the tone of United States diplomacy towards
England, and had added, that it was time to show that it was felt and
resented. No such fault could attach to the correspondence of Mr. Rush
and Mr. King, or to that of Mr. Clay, which Mr. Addington had found
quite acceptable; but it was ascribed to Mr. Adams's instructions to Mr.
Rush, printed by order of the Senate. Mr. Gallatin later discovered that
the offensive remarks were in Baylies's report on the territory west of
the Stony Mountains. Mr. Gallatin explained the independence of the
House committees in the United States, but as a diplomatist he felt the
need of a concert between the executive and the committees of Congress
in all that concerns foreign relations. Government, after all, is a
complex science.
The simple directness with which Mr. Gallatin dealt with Lord Liverpool
could not serve with a man of Canning's disposition. Mr. Gallatin did
not fail to bring to bear the pressure of a possible change in the
relations of the United States and Great Britain, which might arise from
the war which seemed imminent between that power and Spain. The new
questions of Cuba, and the old habit of impressment, might at once bring
the United States into collision with England. But the war did not take
place, and the close of the year found the negotiations not far
advanced. Only the convention of 1815 would no doubt be renewed. He
asked for further instructions on that subject, the joint occupancy of
western territory, and impressments, all of which he hoped to arrange
in the spring and summer, and return home. Mr. Lawrence he found to be a
secretary more capable in the current business of the legation than any
of his predecessors. Mr. Gallatin could safely leave him there as
_charge d'affaires_.
In December, Chateaubriand used in the House of Peers the words which
Mr. Gallatin had said to him, 'that England could not take Cuba without
making war on the United States, and that she knew it.' Mr. Gallatin so
informed Adams, and added, that France would no doubt agree, as
Chateaubriand would have agreed, to a tripartite instrument if England
were of the same opinion.
In March, 1827, Adams warned Gallatin that the sudden and unexpected
determination of Great Britain to break off all negotiation concerning
the colonial trade, and the contemporaneous interdiction of the vessels
of the United States from all British ports in the West Indies, had put
a new face on matters. A renewal of the convention of 1818 would
probably be agreed to by the Senate, but no concession in the form of a
treaty would be acceptable. His words were emphatic. "One inch of ground
yielded on the northwest coast,--one step backward from the claim to the
navigation of the St. Lawrence,--one hair's breadth of compromise upon
the article of impressment would be certain to meet the reprobation of
the Senate." In this temper of parties, Adams added, "All we can hope to
accomplish will be to adjourn controversies which we cannot adjust, and
say to Britain as the Abbe Bernis said to Cardinal Fleuri: 'Monseigneur,
j'attendrai.'"
But changes now occurred in the British ministry: Lord Liverpool died in
February, 1827--Mr. Canning in the following August. Lord Goderich
became prime minister. The new administration returned from Canning's
eccentric course to the old and quiet path. The commercial convention of
1815 was renewed indefinitely, each party being at liberty to abrogate
it at twelve months' notice. The joint occupancy of the Oregon
Territory, agreed to in 1818, was continued in a similar manner. On
September 29 a convention was signed, referring the northeast boundary
to the arbitration of a friendly sovereign. Mr. Gallatin believed that,
had Canning lived, he would have opened a negotiation on the subject of
impressment. Huskisson considered that 'the right, even if well founded,
was one the exercise of which was intolerable, but that this was not the
time to take up the subject.' The new British administration did not
dare to encounter the clamor of the navy, the opposition of the Tories,
and the pride of the nation on this question.
Having accomplished all that was practicable, completed all the current
business, and leaving the British government in a better temper than he
found it, Mr. Gallatin returned to the United States, reaching New York
on November 29, 1827. Nothing remained in foreign relations in respect
to which Mr. Gallatin felt that he could be of much use except the
northeast boundary. In a letter of congratulation to Mr. Gallatin on his
arrival, President Adams made ample amends for all his harsh judgments,
expressed or withheld. The three conventions were entirely satisfactory
to him. Of the negotiation he said, in words as graceful as warm, "I
shall feel most sensibly the loss of your presence at London, and can
form no more earnest wish than that your successor may acquire the same
influence of reason and good temper which you did exercise, and that it
may be applied with as salutary effect to the future discussions between
the two governments." During his visit to London Mr. Gallatin was
overwhelmed with civilities. Canning was courteous to a degree, and
rarely a day passed that the American ambassador had not to choose
between half a dozen invitations to dinner. At the house of the Russian
minister, the Count de Lieven, he was always welcome, and the Countess
de Lieven, the autocrat of foreign society in London, without whose pass
no stranger could cross the sacred threshold of Almack's, was his fast
friend. To each circle he carried that which each most prized. Whether
the conversation turned upon government or science, the dry figures of
finance, or the more genial topic of diplomatic intrigue, Mr. Gallatin
was its easy master, and his words never fell on inattentive ears.
With this mission to London Mr. Gallatin's diplomatic service closed. He
would have accepted the French mission in 1834, and so informed Van
Buren, but General Jackson, who was President, had his own plans, and
'ran his machine' without consulting other than his own prejudices or
whims. But although Mr. Gallatin was no longer in the field of
diplomacy, his counsels were eagerly sought. The northeastern boundary
was a troublesome question, indeed in the new phases of American
politics an imminent danger. The extension of the commercial relations
of Great Britain and the United States rendered it imperative that no
point of dispute should remain which could be determined. For two years
after his return from England, Mr. Gallatin was employed in the
preparation of an argument to be laid before the king of the
Netherlands, who had been selected as the arbiter between the United
States and Great Britain on the boundary. The king undertook to press a
conventional line, which the United States, not being bound to accept,
refused. In 1839 Mr. Gallatin prepared, and put before the world, a
statement of the facts in the case. This, revised, together with the
speech of Mr. Webster, a copy of the Jay treaty, and eight maps, he
published at his own expense in 1840.
At this time conflicts on the Maine frontier brought the subject up in a
manner not to be ignored. Popular feeling was at high pitch. In this
condition of affairs Alexander Baring, who had been raised to the
peerage as Lord Ashburton, was sent to America on a mission of
friendship and peace. As a young man he had listened to the debate on
Jay's treaty in 1795. He was now to be received by Webster in Washington
in the same spirit in which Grenville received Jay in London, when it
was mutually understood that they should discuss the matter as friends
and not as diplomatists, and leave their articles as records of
agreement, not as compromises of discord. Gallatin eagerly awaited the
arrival of his old friend, and was grievously disappointed when contrary
winds blew the frigate which carried him to Annapolis. Letters were
immediately exchanged; Lord Ashburton engaging before he left the
country to find Gallatin out, and, as he said, to "_draw a little wisdom
from the best well_." After the treaty was signed, Lord Ashburton went
from Washington to New York, and the old friends met once more: Mr.
Gallatin was in his 82d year, but in the full possession of his
faculties; Lord Ashburton in his 68th year: a memorable meeting of two
great men, whose lives had much in common; the one the foremost banker
of England, the other the matchless financier of America; and to this
sufficient honor was added for each the singular merit of having
negotiated for his country the most important treaty in its relation to
the other since the separation of 1783,--Mr. Gallatin, the Treaty of
Ghent, which gave peace to America; Lord Ashburton, that treaty which
is known by his name and which secured peace to Great Britain.
In 1846 Mr. Gallatin rendered his last diplomatic service by the