General Smith offered the toast, "Peace, if peace is honorable; war, if war is necessary!" the President was open in denouncing Bonaparte's ambition; Monroe who had talked long with Pichon, used language even more startling than that of the President or the Cabinet:—
- "He did not conceal from me that if his negotiation failed, the Administration had made up its mind to act with the utmost vigor, and to receive the overtures which England was incessantly making. He repeated to me several times that I could only imperfectly imagine the extent of those overtures, and that if the tie were once made between the two States, they would not stop half way."[1]
If Monroe made such an assertion as Pichon reported, he carried his diplomacy beyond the line of truthfulness; for although Thornton, without instructions, had offered one or two suggestions of concert, England had made no overture. Monroe's own instructions rested on the opposite principle,—that England was to receive, not to make, overtures. Jefferson wished only to create the impression that disaster impended over France if she persevered in closing the Mississippi. He spoke clearly to this effect in a letter written to Dupont at the time he was alarming Pichon:—
- "Our circumstances are so imperious as to admit of no delay as to our course, and the use of the Mississippi
- ↑ Pichon to Talleyrand, 29 Pluviôse, An xi. (Feb. 17, 1803); Archives des Aff. Étr., MSS.
