Earl Grey, although he approved of rejecting the American offer, wrote to Brougham that in this note Canning had outdone himself.[288] No doubt his irony betrayed too much of the cleverness which had been so greatly admired by Eton schoolboys; but it served the true purpose of satire,--it stung to the quick, and goaded Americans into life-long hatred of England. Pinkney, whose British sympathies had offered long resistance to maltreatment, fairly lost his temper over this note. “Insulting and insidious,” he called it in his private correspondence with Madison.[289] He was the more annoyed because Canning wrote him an explanatory letter of the same date which gave a personal sting to the public insult.[290] “I feel that it is not such a letter as I could have persuaded myself to write in similar circumstances,” he complained.[291] Pinkney’s abilities were great. In the skirmish of words in which Canning delighted, Pinkney excelled; and in his later career at the bar, of which he was the most brilliant leader, and in the Senate, where he was heard with bated breath, he showed more than once a readiness to overbear opposition by methods too nearly resembling those of Canning; but as a diplomatist he contented himself with preserving the decorous courtesy which Canning lacked. He answered the explanatory letter of September 23 with so much skill and force that Canning was obliged to rejoin; and the rejoinder hardly raised the British secretary’s reputation.[292] With this exchange of notes, the diplomatic discussion ended for the season; and the packet set sail for America, bearing to Jefferson the news that his scheme of peaceable coercion had resulted in a double failure, which left no alternative but war or submission. FOOTNOTES: [261] The Morning Post, Jan. 16, 1808. [262] Cobbett’s Debates, x. 482, 483. [263] Cobbett’s Debates, x. 937, 938. [264] Cobbett’s Debates, x. 971. [265] Cobbett’s Debates, x. 1066. [266] Brougham to Grey, April 21, 1808; Brougham’s Memoirs, i. 399. [267] Pinkney to Madison, Jan. 26, 1808; State Papers, iii. 206. [268] Pinkney to Madison, Feb. 2, 1808; State Papers, iii. 207. [269] Canning to Pinkney, Feb. 22, 1808; State Papers, iii. 208. [270] Pinkney to Madison, Feb. 23, 1808; State Papers, iii. 208. [271] Suggestions by S. P. for a Supplementary Order in Council, March 26, 1808; Perceval MSS. [272] Opinion of Lord Castlereagh, March-April, 1808; Perceval MSS. [273] Opinion of Mr. Canning, March 28, 1808; Perceval MSS. [274] American State Papers, iii. 281. [275] Madison to Pinkney, July 18, 1808; State Papers, iii. 224. [276] Cobbett’s Debates, xi. 536. [277] Britain Independent of Commerce, by William Spence (London), 1808. [278] Commerce Defended, by James Mill (London), 1808. [279] Canning to Pinkney, Sept. 23, 1808; State Papers, iii. 231. [280] Brougham to Grey, July 2, 1808; Brougham’s Memoirs, i. 405. [281] Speech of Mr. Canning, June 24, 1808; Cobbett’s Debates, xi. 1050.