be so entire as to make reticences and restraints unnecessary. The idea that Jefferson could put himself in Bonaparte’s hands without reticence or restraint belonged to old theories of opposition,--a few months dispelled it; and when he had been a year in office, he wrote again to Livingston, withdrawing the objection to La Forest and Otto. “When I wrote that letter,” said he,[152] “I did not harbor a doubt that the disposition on that side the water was as cordial as I knew ours to be.” He had discovered his mistake,--“the dispositions now understood to exist there impose of themselves limits to the openness of our communications.” Even before Livingston sailed, the rumors of the retrocession of Louisiana had taken such definite shape[153] that, in June, 1801, Secretary Madison instructed the ministers at London, Paris, and Madrid on the subject. These instructions were remarkable for their mildness.[154] No protest was officially ordered against a scheme so hostile to the interests of the Union. On the contrary, Livingston was told, in September, 1801, that if he could obtain West Florida from France, or by means of French influence, “such a proof on the part of France of good-will toward the United States would contribute to reconcile the latter” to seeing Bonaparte at New Orleans. Even after Rufus King, the United States minister at London, sent home a copy of Lucien Bonaparte’s treaty of Madrid, in which the whole story was told,[155] this revelation, probably managed by Godoy in order to put the United States and England on their guard, produced no immediate effect. Jefferson yielded with reluctance to the conviction that he must quarrel with Bonaparte. Had not Godoy’s delays and Toussaint’s resistance intervened, ten thousand French soldiers, trained in the school of Hoche and Moreau, and commanded by a future marshal of France, might have occupied New Orleans and St. Louis before Jefferson could have collected a brigade of militia at Nashville.