Jefferson he might have avoided all these scandals.” The British minister wrote to Lord Hawkesbury a brief account of his reception, closing with the remark:[272]-- “Under these circumstances, my Lord, I have thought it advisable to avoid all occasions where I and my wife might be exposed to a repetition of the same want of distinction toward us until I shall have received authority from you to acquiesce in it, by a signification of his Majesty’s pleasure to that effect.” Accordingly, when the President invited the two ministers to dine at the White House without their wives, they replied that they could not accept the invitation until after receiving instructions from their Governments. Jefferson regarded this concerted answer as an insult.[273] He too lost his temper so far as to indulge in sharp comments, and thought the matter important enough to call for explanation. In a private letter to Monroe, dated Jan. 8, 1804, he wrote:[274]-- “Mr. Merry is with us, and we believe him to be personally as desirable a character as could have been sent us; but he is unluckily associated with one of an opposite character in every point. She has already disturbed our harmony extremely. He began by claiming the first visit from the national ministers. He corrected himself in this; but a pretension to take precedence at dinner, etc., over all others is persevered in. We have told him that the principle of society as well as of government with us is the equality of the individuals composing it; that no man here would come to a dinner where he was to be marked with inferiority to any other; that we might as well attempt to force our principle of equality at St. James’s as he his principle of precedence here. I had been in the habit when I invited female company (having no lady in my family) to ask one of the ladies of the four Secretaries to come and take care of my company, and as she was to do the honors of the table I handed her to dinner myself. That Mr. Merry might not construe this as giving them a precedence over Mrs. Merry I have discontinued it, and here as in private houses the _pêle-mêle_ practice is adhered to. They have got Yrujo to take a zealous part in the claim of precedence. It has excited generally emotions of great contempt and indignation (in which the members of the Legislature participate sensibly) that the agents of foreign nations should assume to dictate to us what shall be the laws of our society. The consequence will be that Mr. and Mrs. Merry will put themselves into Coventry, and that he will lose the best half of his usefulness to his nation,--that derived from a perfectly familiar and private intercourse with the Secretaries and myself. The latter, be assured, is a virago, and in the short course of a few weeks has established a degree of dislike among all classes which one would have thought impossible in so