Attempts on the part of the United States to prevent hostilities, did not cease until war had been declared, and even then a disposition was manifested to put a speedy termination to them, for in one week after this event, Mr. Jonathan Russell, our _chargé d’affaires_ at the court of St. James, received instructions to agree to an armistice as a preliminary to a treaty, provided the British government should repeal her orders in council, and discontinue the impressment of our seamen, and afterwards without insisting upon any particular agreement. All our pacific efforts, however, were fruitless, our proposals refused with disdain, and accompanied with language of reproach and insult, even conveying the idea that the conduct of the United States was pusillanimous. She refused to treat with us at all, unless as preliminary we would recall our letters of marque and reprisal, and cease all hostile acts towards British property and British subjects. Such degrading conditions could never be submitted to by the United States, although the federal party were willing and even clamorous to comply with them. The virtue and patriotism of the people, however, preponderated over all the vile attempts at causing the nation to accept the disgraceful terms dictated by her haughty foe, to procure the repose she desired. The middle of September found us still endeavoring to procure an adjustment of our difficulties amicably. The proposals of Mr. Russell, though of the most liberal nature, were treated contemptuously, and at an interview on the seventeenth of September, lord Castlereagh expressed great astonishment that American commissioners should still continue to indulge the expectation that the right of impressment should ever be relinquished, and even had the arrogance to say that ‘_our_ friends in congress had been so confident in that mistake, that they had ascribed the failure of such an arrangement solely to the misconduct of the American government.’ The demands of the British in insolence seemed to have no limits; asking if the ‘United States would deliver up the native British seamen who might be naturalized in America.’ ‘If,’ said lord Castlereagh, ‘the American government was so anxious to get rid of the war, it would have an opportunity of doing so, on learning the revocation of the orders in council.’