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Subject Area: Political Theory

GALLATIN TO HENRY CLAY. - Albert Gallatin, The Writings of Albert Gallatin, vol. 2 [1879]

Edition used:

The Writings of Albert Gallatin, ed. Henry Adams (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1879). 3 vols.

Part of: The Writings of Albert Gallatin, 3 vols.

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GALLATIN TO HENRY CLAY.

No. 120.

London, 28th September, 1827.

Sir,—

The convention respecting the North-East boundary is not yet signed; but I believe that it will be ready to-morrow or early next week, when we shall hold our last conference, all the subjects on which we were respectively instructed being exhausted.

I will transmit the protocols at the same time with the convention, to which they refer almost exclusively.

The answer to my note of 17th August to Lord Dudley has not yet been received, and I do not know whether there is any intention to delay it, although I am certain, from another conversation I had yesterday with Mr. Huskisson, that there is none to change the determination already announced on that subject. This being the only thing which, after signing the convention, will detain me here, I will, when it shall have been received, avail myself of the permission of the President to return home when the negotiations intrusted to my care should have been terminated.

I have reason to believe that had Mr. Canning lived he would have opened a negotiation on the subject of impressment. Understanding, from an authentic source, that there was some disposition to that effect amongst two or three members of the Cabinet, I sought an interview with Mr. Huskisson in order to ascertain the fact; as, however anxious to return, I would have remained till next spring had there been any chance whatever to make a satisfactory arrangement on that subject, or, indeed, on any of those on which we have heretofore been unable to agree.

Mr. Huskisson expressed himself in the most decided terms in favor of an arrangement founded on the basis heretofore proposed by the United States. He entered into no details and asked no questions, as he was aware that the proposal must come from Great Britain. But he said that if the right was well founded, and he did not intimate that it was, it was one the exercise of which was intolerable. He had been in hopes that, had Lord Liverpool’s Administration been permitted to continue, a satisfactory arrangement might have been made. But he was sorry to be obliged to add that this was not the time to take up that subject, that he could not recommend it to the consideration of his colleagues, and that it must be postponed to a more favorable opportunity.

It is very clear that he does not think this Administration sufficiently strong, and that he does not wish, deprived of the assistance of Lord Liverpool and Mr. Canning, to encounter on that subject the clamor of the navy, the opposition of the Tories, and, if not the public opinion, at least the pride of the nation.

I may here remark that I have not been able to arrange any subject but such as did not admit of being delayed. And although this has been in a great degree owing to the unfavorable temper I had to encounter, it may also be in part ascribed to the unsettled state of the Cabinet since Lord Liverpool’s political death. The determination not to open the colonial intercourse, and that not to negotiate on the navigation of the river St. Lawrence without something like a disclaimer of the right, had been taken before my arrival; and on both points this government was immovable. In other respects, and in their feelings generally towards the United States, I think that they are in a better disposition than I found them.

I have the honor, &c.