The Federalists worked mischievously to widen the breach between the British minister and the President. They encouraged Merry’s resentment. Late in January, nearly two months after the first _pêle-mêle_, Madison officially informed Merry for the first time that the President meant to recognize no precedence between foreign ministers, but that all, even including secretaries of legation in charge, were to be treated with perfect equality, or what Madison termed “a complete pell-mell,” and would be received, even at their first audience, with no more ceremony than was practised toward any other individual. Merry replied that this notice should have been given to him on his arrival, and that he could not acquiesce in it without instructions. He then wrote to his Government,[285]-- “I have now but too much reason to fear, what I did not at first suspect, that the marked inattention toward me of the present Administration of this country has been a part of their unfriendly disposition toward his Majesty and toward the nation which I have the honor to represent.” At the same moment, in January and February, 1804, Pickering and Griswold were plotting their New England confederacy. Merry was taken by them into the secret, and gave them aid. The Senate, February 9, voted to strike out the fifth article of Rufus King’s boundary convention, and to approve the other articles, which provided for fixing the disputed boundary-line of Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont. Merry wrote to his Government that the object of cancelling the fifth article was to deprive Great Britain of her treaty-right to navigate the Mississippi:[286]--