“I look forward to the ensuing session of Congress with no very pleasant feelings. To say nothing of the disadvantages of the place, natural as well as acquired, I anticipate a plentiful harvest of bickering and blunders; of which, however, I hope to be a quiet, if not an unconcerned, spectator.... I regret exceedingly Mr. Jefferson’s resolution to retire, and almost as much the premature annunciation of that determination. It almost precludes a revision of his purpose, to say nothing of the intrigues which it will set on foot. If I were sure that Monroe would succeed him, my regret would be very much diminished.”[100] Intrigue and dissension could not be confined to the House, but must spread to the Senate, and could hardly fail to affect even the Cabinet. While Gallatin’s personal sympathies were with Madison, his political bias was on the opposite side. The old Republicans, with John Randolph at their head, had steadily protected the Treasury from jobs and extravagance; without their help Gallatin would lie at the mercy of the Northern democrats, who were not behind the Federalists in their willingness to spend money. He might expect an alliance between the Northern democrats and the Smith faction which controlled the Navy Department. To such a combination he must have foreseen that Madison would yield. In the face of such latent feuds nothing could be more hazardous than to spring upon Congress, in Madison’s interests, a new, tortuous, complicated Spanish policy, turning on the secret assurance that France could be bribed with five million dollars, at the moment when Congress would be required to begin a commercial war upon England. Whether Madison was responsible for these measures or not, his enemies would charge him with the responsibility; and even without such attacks from his own party, he was struggling with enemies enough to have crushed Jefferson himself. Early in December, all the actors in the drama assembled, to play another act in a tragi-comedy of increasing interest. With his old sanguine hopes, but not with all his old self-confidence, the President watched them slowly arrive,--Democrats, Federalists, Southern Republicans, all equally ignorant of what had been done, and what they were expected to do; but more curious, better-informed, and more sharp-sighted than these, the three diplomatists, Turreau, Merry, and Yrujo, waiting with undisguised contempt to see what species of coercion was to be employed against England, France, and Spain.