Mr. Adams to Mr. Seward.
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This matter having been disposed of, I then remarked that I was still in the receipt of letters from my government urging me to continue to press her Majesty’s minister for some action on the subject which I had heretofore labored so much to present to his attention. But as I had little confidence in the success of any repetition I might make of my former arguments, I hoped his lordship would permit me to read to him the last despatch which had reached me. I had not, indeed, been directed to lay it before him, nor to leave a copy of it. The time and manner of using it had been left wholly to my discretion. But as it seemed to me to have been carefully and elaborately drawn as a full exposition of the views of the government at this crisis, I was of opinion that it was no more than just to both parties [Page 90] that it should be communicated in extenso. His lordship said he should be glad to hear it, and then I read all of it but the single passage at the close of the first paragraph.
After I had done, his lordship remarked that he had no disposition to call in question any of the statements made in the despatch. It might be just as there alleged But there still remained much to be done. New Orleans, Savannah, and Charleston continued in the possession of the other party, and the resistance of the great armies left the result yet awaiting further development.
I replied to this by saying that from the outset I had entertained little doubt of what the end of this struggle would be, provided that we were left entirely to ourselves to work it out. In my mind that end was now rapidly approaching. I had become much more concerned in considering what the state of things was likely to be after it had been attained. It was with very great regret I was compelled to express my conviction of the rapid increase among the people of the United States of feelings of irritation and bitterness towards this country. I received the evidence of it from so many and such opposite sources that I could not question the fact. My own disposition had been and continued to be of the most friendly character. But I very much feared that if her Majesty’s government did not hold forth some means which would enable its friends to maintain the existence of a reciprocal feeling, the seeds would be planted of a hostility that would bear bitter fruit for the whole of the next generation.
His lordship replied that it was much to be regretted, but the fact was that this hostile feeling had always prevailed in America. Down to the period of the Prince of Wales’s visit whatever the English had done, it seemed to animate all classes alike to take it amiss. Even such a person as Mr. Everett, from whom better things might be expected, seemed to omit no opportunity of finding fault with what they did, and stimulating the popular prejudice at their expense. It seemed a hopeless task to attempt to correct this tendency.
I then begged leave to suggest to his lordship whether there was not another side to the picture. I thought I was in a situation to present it, for I had had peculiar opportunities for observing it, from the fact that members of my family had repeatedly been called to act on the scene. Immediately after the peace of 1783 my grandfather had been sent here as the first minister. He came with a disposition to establish the most friendly relations. He had not been favorably impressed with the policy of the French government, and was anxious to equalize the balance of influence in America. And so well was this known that the King, George III, at his audience, appeared to me to have stepped to the verge of the proprieties of his position in making allusion to it. Then was the first opportunity to conciliate America. And Mr. Pitt seemed to have conceived the idea. Had the commercial policy he recommended been adopted, the United States would have been more closely bound to this country after their independence than they ever had been whilst colonies. In lieu of this, the principles of Lord Sheffield’s pamphlet were accepted, and it was decided to await the possibilities of an unfavorable issue to our experiment of government. The natural consequence was an alienation, which ended in the war of 1812. At the close of that war my father was sent here to do what he could to effect a re-establishment of amicable relations. His disposition was all that could be wished. It was met by indifference and repulsion. From that period I had every reason to know the impressions that had gone far to regulate his action as a public man down to the close of his life towards Great Britain. And now I had come here with the most anxious desire to preserve relations of amity, which seemed latterly to have been taking a more positive character than [Page 91] ever before. I had done everything in my power during my residence to that end. I was anxious, whenever I might return home, to have the means of making a favorable report to my countrymen. I supplicated his lordship, then, not to compel me to go back without the possession of the smallest evidence that could refute the inevitable arguments that would be drawn from the position that Great Britain had thus far chosen to assume during this struggle. * * * *
I have the honor to be, sir, your obedient servant,
Hon. William H. Seward, Secretary of State, Washington, D. C.