“Whenever our national legislature,” he said, “is led to overleap the prescribed bounds of their constitutional powers, on the State legislatures in great emergencies devolves the arduous task,--it is their right, it becomes their duty,--to interpose their protecting shield between the rights and liberties of the people and the assumed power of the general government.” If Madison was not by that time weary of his own words,--if the Resolutions of 1798 and the fatal “interpose” of Virginia had not become hateful to his ears,--he might have found some amusement in the irony with which Trumbull flung the familiar phrases of Virginia back into her face; but serious as such conduct was, the mere defiance carried less alarm than was warranted by the signs of secret concert with England which the Federalists willingly betrayed. Trumbull and Hillhouse, Pickering and Otis, were not necessarily masters of the situation, even when at the head of all New England; but when they pointed significantly at the fleets and armies of Great Britain behind them, they carried terror to the heart of the Union. So little did they hide their attitude toward the British government that their organ, the “New England Palladium,” published, January 6, Canning’s personal letter of Sept. 23, 1808, to Pinkney, which Madison had suppressed. How it had been obtained, no one knew. The British Foreign Office seemed to stand in direct communication with Boston, while the Boston Federalists exulted in a chance to swell what they thought the triumph of George Canning over their own Federalist friend, William Pinkney. Tactics like these, unscrupulous though they might be, were effective. Jefferson and Madison had the best reason to know the force of such factiousness, for only ten years before, on less provocation, they had themselves led in Virginia and Kentucky a movement with a similar purpose; but although their history as leaders of an opposition implied agreement in principle with the doings of Massachusetts and Connecticut, their dignity and interest as Presidents of the United States required them to carry out the laws they had advised and approved. Whatever might be the personal wishes of a few men like Pickering, the great mass of Federalists wished at heart no more harm to the country than to overthrow and humiliate Jefferson, and to cripple Madison from the start; while the Administration, on its side, in struggling to escape a personal humiliation, was obliged to adopt any course that offered the best hope of success even though it should sacrifice the national character. As the last weeks of President Jefferson’s Administration approached, this personal conflict--the bitterness of sixteen years--concentrated its virulence upon a single point, but that point vital to Jefferson’s fame and popularity,--the embargo.