Pichon was a sore trial to the moderate amount of patience which Bonaparte possessed. Instead of hinting to Madison that these arguments would have more weight if the President proposed to support them by acts such as a military First Consul was accustomed to respect, Pichon wrote melancholy accounts of his situation to Talleyrand. The Americans, he said, were throwing themselves into the arms of England; they thought they held the balance of power between France and Great Britain, and meant to make the nation which should force them into war regret the inconsiderate act; the States of New York, Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, either through their legislatures or their governors, had energetically announced their readiness to risk everything to maintain the dignity and rights of the nation; Madison refused to do business, on the ground that Talleyrand’s want of attention to Livingston required reprisals; the Secretary of the Treasury talked of war; a public dinner had been given to Monroe, at which General Smith offered the toast, “Peace, if peace is honorable; war, if war is necessary!” the President was open in denouncing Bonaparte’s ambition; Monroe who had talked long with Pichon, used language even more startling than that of the President or the Cabinet:-- “He did not conceal from me that if his negotiation failed, the Administration had made up its mind to act with the utmost vigor, and to receive the overtures which England was incessantly making. He repeated to me several times that I could only imperfectly imagine the extent of those overtures, and that if the tie were once made between the two States, they would not stop half way.”[191] If Monroe made such an assertion as Pichon reported, he carried his diplomacy beyond the line of truthfulness; for although Thornton, without instructions, had offered one or two suggestions of concert, England had made no overture. Monroe’s own instructions rested on the opposite principle,--that England was to receive, not to make, overtures. Jefferson wished only to create the impression that disaster impended over France if she persevered in closing the Mississippi. He spoke clearly to this effect in a letter written to Dupont at the time he was alarming Pichon:-- “Our circumstances are so imperious as to admit of no delay as to our course, and the use of the Mississippi so indispensable that we cannot hesitate one moment to hazard our existence for its maintenance. If we fail in this effort to put it beyond the reach of accident, we see the destinies we have to run, and prepare at once for them.”[192]