From such premises, the conclusion, so far as concerned England, was inevitable; and Thornton agreed with Merry in affirming it without reserve:-- “Everything, as it relates to this government, now depends on our firmness. If we yield an iota without a real and perfect equivalent (not such imaginary equivalents as Mr. Madison mentions to Mr. Merry), we are lost.” CHAPTER XVII. Whatever objects the President and the Secretary of State may have expected to gain by their change of tone in the winter of 1803–1804 toward Spain and England, they must have been strangely free from human passions if they were unconscious of making at least two personal enemies upon whose ill-will they might count. If they were unaware of giving their victims cause for bitterness,--or if, as seemed more probable, they were indifferent to it,--the frequent chances of retaliation which the two ministers enjoyed soon showed that in diplomacy revenge was not only sweet but easy. Even the vehement Spanish hatred felt by Yrujo for Madison fell short of the patient Anglo-Saxon antipathy rooted in the minds of the British minister and his wife. When Yrujo, in March, 1804, burst into the State Department with the Mobile Act in his hand and denounced Madison to his face as party to an “infamous libel,” he succeeded in greatly annoying the secretary without violating Jefferson’s “canons of etiquette.” Under the code of republican manners which the President and his secretary had introduced, they could not fairly object to anything which Yrujo might choose to say or do. Absolute equality and “the rule of _pêle-mêle_” reached their natural conclusion between such hosts and guests in freedom of language and vehemence of passion. What might have been Merry’s feelings or conduct had he met with more cordiality and courtesy was uncertain; but the mortifications of his first month at Washington embittered his temper, and left distinct marks of acrimony in the diplomacy of America and England, until war wiped out the memory of reciprocal annoyances. The Spaniard’s enmity was already a peril to Madison’s ambition, and one which became more threatening every day; but the Englishman’s steady resentment was perhaps more mischievous, if less noisy. The first effect of Jefferson’s tactics was to ally the British minister with Yrujo; the second bound him to Senator Pickering and Representative Griswold; the third united his fortunes with those of Aaron Burr. Merry entered the path of secret conspiracy; he became the confidant of all the intriguers in Washington, and gave to their intrigues the support of his official influence.