The mild Addington ministry was still in power, and nothing had yet happened to excite Monroe’s alarm in regard to British policy in the United States. On the contrary, the ministry aided the Louisiana purchase with readiness that might reasonably have surprised an American minister, while the friendliest spirit was shown by Lord Hawkesbury in all matters of detail. Except the standing dispute about impressments, every old point of collision had been successfully removed by King, whose two conventions,--the one for discharging British debts recognized by treaty, the other for settling the boundaries of New England and of the northwest territory,--seemed to free the countries for the first time from the annoying inheritance of disputes entailed by the definitive treaty which closed the Revolutionary War in 1783. The calm which seemed to prevail throughout England in regard to her relations with America contrasted sharply with the excitement shown by the English people in all their allusions to the Corsican demon, as they thought him, whose regiments, gathering at Boulogne, they might expect to see at any moment encamped at Hastings, where no hostile camp-fire had burned since the night, seven hundred years before, when the body of an English king, hedged about with the dead bodies of a whole English aristocracy, lay stiff and stark on the bloody hillside, victims of another French adventurer. England was intent on her own imminent dangers; and under the strain which the renewal of her painful efforts brought with it, she was glad to leave America alone. Yet calm as the atmosphere appeared to be, signs of future storm were not wholly wanting. Had Monroe been naturally anxious, he might, without seeking far, have found cause for anxiety serious enough to take away all appetite for Spanish travel, and to hold him close to his post until some one should consent to relieve him from an ungrateful and unpromising duty. The American minister at London in 1804 could hope to gain nothing either for his country or for himself, and he stood always on the verge of disaster; but when he was required to take a “high tone” in the face of a nation almost insane with anxiety, he challenged more chances of mortification than any but a desperate politician would have cared to risk. Monroe had at first nothing to do but to watch the course of public opinion in England. During the autumn of 1803, while President Jefferson and Secretary Madison at Washington received Merry with a changed policy, and all through the winter, while Washington was torn by “canons of etiquette” and by contests of strength between Jefferson, Madison, Casa Yrujo, and Merry, the United States minister in London was left at peace to study the political problems which bore on his own fortunes and on those of his friends at home, as well as on the interests of the Union.