Page:The Presidents of the United States, 1789-1914, v. II.djvu/282

224 LIVES OF THE PRESIDENTS civil appointments"; and then criticising exhaust ively each of Gen. Scott s avowed political opinions, and quoting Mr. Thurlow Weed, "one of Gen. Scott s most able supporters," as acknowl edging that "there was weakness in all Scott said or did about the presidency." When, in 1853, Franklin Pierce became presi dent, he appointed Mr. Buchanan minister to Eng land. Buchanan, though social in his nature, was a man of simple republican tastes, and the formal ity and etiquette of life at a foreign court, never agreeable, now, at the age of sixty-two, appeared to him particularly distasteful; besides, he con sidered that his duty to his young relatives as well as to his only surviving brother, a clergyman in delicate health, required his presence at home. But with Mr. Buchanan duty to his country always outweighed every other consideration, and Mr. Pierce s urgent appeal to him to accept what was at that time a very important mission at length prevailed. Mr. Buchanan sailed for England from New York on August 5, 1853, and landed in Liver pool on the 17th. There were three important questions to be settled with England at this time: the first related to the fisheries ; the second was the desire of England to establish reciprocal free trade in certain enumerated articles between the United States and the British North American provinces, and thus preserve their allegiance and ward off