When Pickering defied fine and imprisonment under his own law, in order to make a concert of political action with George Canning to keep the British government steady in aggression, he believed that his end justified his means; and he avowed his end to be the bringing of his friends into power. For this purpose he offered himself to Canning as the instrument for organizing what was in fact a British party in New England, asking in return only the persistence of Great Britain in a line of policy already adopted, which was sure to work against the Republican rule. Pickering knew that his conduct was illegal; but he had in his hands an excuse which justified him, as he chose to think, in disregarding the law. He persuaded himself that Jefferson was secretly bound by an engagement with Napoleon to effect the ruin of England. Then came Pickering’s master-stroke. The April election--which would decide the political control of Massachusetts for the coming year, and the choice of a senator in the place of J. Q. Adams--was close at hand. February 16, the day when Rose’s negotiation broke down, Pickering sent to Governor Sullivan of Massachusetts a letter intended for official communication to the State legislature.[189] “I may claim some share of attention and credit,” he began,--“that share which is due to a man who defies the world to point, in the whole course of a long and public life, at one instance of deception, at a single departure from Truth.” He entered into speculations upon the causes which had led Congress to impose the embargo. Omitting mention of the Orders in Council, he showed that the official reasons presented in the President’s Embargo Message were not sufficient to justify the measure, and that some secret motive must lie hidden from public view:-- “Has the French Emperor declared that he will have no neutrals? Has he required that our ports, like those of his vassal States in Europe, be shut against British commerce? Is the embargo a substitute, a milder form of compliance, with that harsh demand, which if exhibited in its naked and insulting aspect the American spirit might yet resent? Are we still to be kept profoundly ignorant of the declarations and avowed designs of the French Emperor, although these may strike at our liberty and independence? And in the mean time are we, by a thousand irritations, by cherishing prejudices, and by exciting fresh resentments, to be drawn gradually into a war with Great Britain? Why amid the extreme anxiety of the public mind is it still kept on the rack of fearful expectation by the President’s portentous silence respecting his French despatches? In this concealment there is danger. In this concealment must be wrapt up the real cause of the embargo. On any other supposition it is inexplicable.”