tion, was beginning its clamor for war with England. How much
respect had Madison for this movement, and how much faith in it? A
letter to Jefferson of February 7 answers both questions. Were he not
evidently amused, he would seem to be contemptuous. "To enable the
Executive to step at once into Canada," he says, "they have provided,
after two months' delay, for a regular force requiring twelve to raise
it, and after three months for a volunteer force, on terms not likely to
raise it at all for that object. The mixture of good and bad, avowed and
disguised motives, accounting for these things, is curious enough, but
not to be explained in the compass of a letter." This is not the tone of
either hope or fear. If war was in his mind at that time, it was not war
with England. Three weeks later he writes to Barlow at Paris. On various
points of negotiation between that minister and the French government,
he observes much that "suggests distrust rather than expectation." He
complains of delay, of vagueness, of neglect, of discourtesy, of a
disregard of past obligations as to the liberation of ships and cargoes
seized, and of late condemnations of ships captured in the Baltic; and
concerning all these and other grievances he says: "We find so little of
explicit dealing or substantial redress mingled with the compliments and
encouragements, which cost nothing because they mean nothing, that
suspicions are unavoidable; and if they be erroneous, the fault does not
lie with those who entertain them." He believed that France, in asking
for a new treaty, which he thinks unnecessary, is only seeking to gain
time in order to take advantage of future events. The commercial
relations between the two countries are so intolerable that trade "will
be prohibited if no essential change take place." Unless there be
indemnity for the great wrongs committed under the Rambouillet decree,
and for other spoliations, he declares that "there can be neither
cordiality nor confidence here; nor any restraint from self-redress in
any justifiable mode of effecting it." The letter concludes with the
emphatic assertion that, if dispatches soon looked for "do not exhibit
the French government in better colors than it has yet assumed, there
will be but one sentiment in this country; and I need not say what that
will be."

Congress all this while was lashing itself into fury against England.
The ambitious young leaders of the Democratic party in the House wer