Monroe returned to Virginia, praised by George Canning and Timothy Pickering, to be John Randolph’s candidate for the Presidency, while Jefferson could regard him in no other light than as a dupe of England, and Madison was obliged to think him a personal enemy. As a result of five years’ honest, patient, and painstaking labor, this division from old friends was sad enough; but had Monroe been a nervous man, so organized as to feel the arrows of his outrageous fortune, his bitterest annoyance on bidding final farewell to Europe would have been, not the thought of his reception in America, not even the memory of Talleyrand’s reproofs, or of the laurels won by Don Pedro Cevallos, or of Lord Harrowby’s roughness, or Lord Mulgrave’s indifference, or Lord Howick’s friendly larcenies, or Canning’s smooth impertinences,--as a diplomatist he would rather have felt most hurt that the British ministry had contrived a new measure of vital interest to America, and should have allowed him to depart without a word of confidence, explanation, or enlightenment as to the nature of the fresh aggression which was to close a long list of disasters with one which left to America only the title of an independent nation. As early as October 3 the “Morning Post” announced at great length that his Majesty’s government had adopted the principle of retaliation. November 10, while Monroe was still waiting at Portsmouth for a fair wind, the “Times” made known that a proclamation was in readiness for the King’s signature, declaring France and all her vassal kingdoms in a state of siege: “The sum of all reasoning on the subject is included in this, that the Continent must and will have colonial productions in spite of the orders and decrees of its master, and we are to take care that she have no other colonial produce than our own.” The fact that American commerce with the Continent was to be forbidden became a matter of public notoriety in London before November 13, and on Saturday, November 14, the day when Monroe’s ship sailed from Portsmouth, the order appeared in the “Gazette;” yet Monroe himself would be obliged to appear before the President in official ignorance of a measure discussed and adopted under his eyes.