With infinite pertinacity Jefferson clung to his own course. He deserved success, although he hardly expected to win it by means of Monroe, whom he urged to go abroad, as his letter implied, not so much to purchase New Orleans, as to restore political quiet at home. For the purchase of New Orleans, Livingston was fully competent; but the opposition at home, as Jefferson candidly wrote to him,[187] were pressing their inflammatory resolutions in the House so hard that “as a remedy to all this we determined to name a minister extraordinary to go immediately to Paris and Madrid to settle this matter. This measure being a visible one, and the person named peculiarly popular with the western country, crushed at once and put an end to all further attempts on the Legislature. From that moment all has been quiet.” The quiet was broken again, soon after this letter was written, by a sharp attack in the Senate. Ross of Pennsylvania, White of Delaware, and Gouverneur Morris of New York, assailed the Administration for the feebleness of its measures. In private, Jefferson did not deny that his measures were pacific, and that he had no great confidence in Monroe’s success; he counted rather on Bonaparte’s taking possession of New Orleans and remaining some years on the Mississippi.[188] “I did not expect he would yield until a war took place between France and England; and my hope was to palliate and endure, if Messrs. Ross, Morris, etc., did not force a premature rupture, until that event. I believed the event not very distant, but acknowledge it came on sooner than I expected.” “To palliate and endure” was therefore the object of Jefferson’s diplomacy for the moment. Whether the Western States could be persuaded to endure or to palliate the presence of a French army at New Orleans was doubtful; but Jefferson’s success in controlling them proved his personal authority and political skill. Meanwhile the interest and activity of the little diplomatic world at Washington increased. Monroe accepted his appointment and came for his instructions. Every one was alive with expectation. As public opinion grew more outspoken, the President was obliged to raise his tone. He talked with a degree of freedom which seemed more inconsistent than it really was with his radical policy of peace. With Thornton he was somewhat cautious.[189] Immediately after Monroe’s nomination, Thornton asked the President whether he intended to let the new envoy pass to England and converse with British ministers about the free navigation of the Mississippi,--a right to which Great Britain, as well as the United States, was entitled by treaty.