our own best citizens consider the interests of the United States to be interwoven with those of Great Britain, and that our safety depends on hers. . . . Of the opinions and reasonings of such men I wish you to be possessed." He held out a confident hope that the embargo would end in an overthrow of the Administration, and that a change in the head of the government would alter its policy "in a manner propitious to the continuance of peace." A few days afterward he placed in Rose's hands two letters from George Cabot. Finally, on the eve of Rose's departure, March 22, he gave the British envoy a letter to Samuel Williams of London. "Let him, if you please, be the medium of whatever epistolary intercourse may take place between you and me."[1]
To these advances Rose replied in his usual tone of courteous superiority:—
- "I avail myself thankfully of your permission to keep that gentleman's [Rufus King's] letter, which I am sure will carry high authority where I can use it confidentially, and whither it is most important that what I conceive to be right impressions should be conveyed. It is not to you that I need protest that rancorous impressions of jealousy or ill-will have never existed there; but it is to be feared that at some time or another the extremest point of human forbearance may be reached. Yet at the present moment there is, I think, a peculiarity of circumstances most strange indeed, which enables the offended party to leave his antagonist to his own sui-
