1805.
THE FLORIDA MESSAGE.
109
navy.
- "The lively sensation" produced by the seizures, wrote Merry to Mulgrave,[1] December 2, "appears to have increased considerably since I had the honor of writing to your Lordship by the last mail. The commercial bodies at Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Norfolk have held public meetings on this subject, and come to resolutions to transmit to the Government of the United States particular statements of the injuries they allege to be sustaining daily in their trade. I am sorry to add that those public prints which are considered as the organs of the Government . . . have of late lost sight in a great measure of their complaints against Spain, with a view, as may be suspected, to excite and direct the whole national indignation against Great Britain. . . .
- "In addition, my Lord, to these circumstances, I have been sorry to find in my recent conversations with Mr. Madison that he has treated this subject in a much more serious light than he had at first represented it to me. At my last interview with him, two days ago, he said that he had flattered himself that Mr. Monroe's remonstrances to your Lordship would not only have produced the liberation of all the vessels which should have been detained previously to the 1st November, but that, as that minister had been promised an answer in writing to his representations, the reconsideration of the matter which would probably have taken place before a written answer was given might have induced his Majesty's government, if not to give up entirely, at least to modify to a tolerable degree, the principle upon which they acted. It was true that the answer in question had not as yet reached him, nor had he heard lately from Mr. Monroe; but he had recently received information from an authentic
- ↑ Merry to Mulgrave, Dec. 2, 1805; MSS. British Archives.
