“Mr. Monroe has no doubt communicated to you,” he wrote to the Secretary of State, “the motives which induced him to leave England in prosecution of his mission to Spain, and while here to attempt to draw from this Government some new declaration in support of our construction of the late treaty. With this view a note was prepared and transmitted through Livingston, the receipt of which was acknowledged by Mr. Talleyrand with a promise that ‘an answer should be given to it as soon as the Emperor should have signified his will on the subject.’ Having waited nearly a month, and no answer being given, having some reason to believe that any declaration from this Court now would be less favorable than those already made, and fearful lest something might be lost at Madrid, while nothing could be gained here, he set out on the 8th instant for Spain. I have but little hope, however, that he will be able to do more than fulfil the forms of his mission.” Armstrong preferred, as he expressed it, “an effort (which cannot fail) to do the business at home.” He had already discovered that the Emperor was personally irritated with the Americans, that he took no pains to conceal it, and that this irritation was a cause of his reserve. “I have employed every means in my power to ascertain the cause of this cause, and have learned from a person sufficiently near him to know the fact, that this temper originated in representations made by Leclerc and others from St. Domingo; that it has since been kept alive by the incident of the war in that country, the trade carried on between it and the United States, the freedom with which he is treated in our press, the matrimonial connection of Jerome, and, above all, the support which principles he wishes to extinguish in France receive from the progressing prosperity of the United States.” With Napoleon in this frame of mind; with Godoy and Cevallos in a humor far worse; and with Talleyrand in such a temper as not to allow of his treating Monroe with civility,--the American plenipotentiary departed to Madrid, hoping that something might occur to overcome his difficulties. During his journey, Charles IV. declared war against England. This long-foreseen event, which should have brought Spain to terms with the United States, in fact threw her only at the feet of Napoleon. Henceforward every offence to Spain was an offence to France, which the Emperor was the more bound to resent because by treaty he must regard a war upon Charles IV. as a war upon himself.