traders in England, and private banks by the score, were forced to suspend payment. Never before, and probably never since, has England known such a fall in prices and destruction of credit.1

This was the impending situation when Parliament adjourned, June 21, with no bright spot on its horizon but the supposed friendship of America. Meanwhile Pinkney wearied Wellesley for an answer to the question whether Fox's blockade was in force. June 10, June 23, and finally August 6, he renewed his formal request. "No importunity had before been spared which it became me to use."2 He was met by the same torpor at every other point. Wellesley promised to name a new minister to Washington, but decided upon none. He invited overtures in regard to the "Chesapeake " affair, but failed to act on them. Rumor said that he neglected business, came rarely to Cabinet meetings, shut himself in his own house, saw only a few friends, and abandoned the attempt to enforce his views. He resolved to retire from the Cabinet, in despair of doing good, and waited only for the month before the next meeting of Parliament, which he conceived to be the most proper time for declaring his intention.8

In the midst of this chaos, such as England had

1 Tooke's History of Prices.

2 Pinkney to Robert Smith, Aug. 14, 1810; State Papers,

iii. 363.

• Memorandum; Supplementary Despatches of Lord Wellington, vii. 266.

rarely seen, fell Cadore's announcement of August 5 that the Imperial Decrees were withdrawn, bien entendu that before November 1 England should have abandoned her blockades, or America should have enforced her rights. Pinkney hastened to lay this information before Lord Wellesley, August 25, and received the usual friendly promises, which had ceased to gratify him. "I am truly disgusted with this," he wrote home, August 29,1" and would, if I followed my own inclination, speedily put an end to it." Two days afterward he received from Wellesley a civil note, saying that whenever the repeal of the French Decrees should actually have taken effect, and the commerce of neutral nations should have been restored to the condition in which it previously stood, the system of counteraction adopted by England should be abandoned. This reply, being merely another form of silence, irritated Pinkney still more, while his instructions pressed him to act. He waited until September 21, when he addressed to Wellesley a keen remonstrance. "If I had been so fortunate," he began," as to obtain for my hitherto unanswered inquiry the notice which I had flattered myself it might receive, and to which I certainly thought it was recommended by the plainest considerations of

1 State Papers, iii. 366.

2 Wellesley to Pinkney, Aug. 31, 1810; State Papers, iii. 366.

Pinkney to Wellesley, Sept. 21, 1810; State Papers, iii. 368.

policy and justice, it would not perhaps have been necessary for me to trouble your Lordship with this letter;" and in this tone he went on to protest against the "unwarrantable prohibitions of intercourse rather than regular blockades," which had helped in nearly obliterating" every trace of the public law of the world":

"Your Lordship has informed me in a recent note that it is his Majesty's earnest desire to see the commerce of the world restored to that freedom which is necessary for its prosperity;' and I cannot suppose that this freedom is understood to be consistent with vast constructive blockades which may be so expanded at pleasure as, without the aid of any new device, to oppress and annihilate every trade but that which England thinks fit to license. It is not, I am sure, to such freedom that your Lordship can be thought to allude."

66

The Marquess of Buckingham's well-advised correspondent some weeks afterward1 remarked that Pinkney, who was at first all sweetness and complaisance, has recently exhibited in his communications with Lord Wellesley an ample measure of republican insolence." Sweetness and insolence were equally thrown away. Pinkney's letter of September 21, like most of his other letters, remained unanswered; and before November 1, when Napoleon's term for England's action expired, a new turn of affairs made answer impossible. The old King was allowed to visit the death-bed of his favorite daughter

1 Buckingham Memoirs, iv. 482.

the Princess Amelia; he excited himself over her wishes and farewells, and October 25 his mind, long failing, gave way for the last time. His insanity could not be disguised, and the Government fell at once into confusion.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE summer of 1810 was quiet and hopeful in America. For the first time since December, 1807, trade was free. Although little immigration occurred, the census showed an increase in population of nearly thirty-seven per cent in ten years, - from 5,300,000 to 7,240,000, of which less than one hundred thousand was due to the purchase of Louisiana. Virginia and Massachusetts still fairly held their own, and New York strode in advance of Pennsylvania, while the West gained little relative weight. Ohio had not yet a quarter of a million people, Indiana only twenty-four thousand, and Illinois but twelve thousand, while Michigan contained less than five thousand. The third census showed no decided change in the balance of power from any point of view bounded by the usual horizon of human life. Perhaps the growth of New York city and Philadelphia pointed to a movement among the American people which might prove more revolutionary than any mere agricultural movement westward. Each of these cities contained a population of ninety-six thousand, while Baltimore rose to forty-six thousand, and Boston to thirty-two thousand. The tendency

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