The evil had reached a point where some corrective must be found; but four years of submission had broken the national spirit. In 1805 the people were almost ready for war with England on the question of the indirect, or carrying, trade of the French and Spanish West Indies. After submitting on that point, in July, 1807, they were again ready to fight for the immunity of their frigates from impressment; but by the close of the year their courage had once more fallen, and they hoped to escape the necessity of fighting under any circumstances whatever, anxiously looking for some expedient, or compromise, which would reconcile a policy of resistance with a policy of peace. This expedient Jefferson and Madison had for fifteen years been ready to offer them. So confident was Jefferson in his theory of peaceable coercion that he would hardly have thought his administrative career complete, had he quitted office without being allowed to prove the value of his plan. The fascination which it exercised over his mind was quite as much due to temperament as to logic; for if reason told him that Europe could be starved into concession, temperament added another motive still more alluring. If Europe persisted in her conduct America would still be safe, and all the happier for cutting off connection with countries where violence and profligacy ruled supreme. The idea of ceasing intercourse with obnoxious nations reflected his own personality in the mirror of statesmanship. In the course of the following year he wrote to a young grandson, Thomas Jefferson Randolph, a letter[110] of parental advice in regard to the conduct of life. “Be a listener only,” he said; “keep within yourself, and endeavor to establish with yourself the habit of silence, especially on politics. In the fevered state of our country no good can ever result from any attempt to set one of these fiery zealots to rights, either in fact or principle. They are determined as to the facts they will believe, and the opinions on which they will act. Get by them, therefore, as you would by an angry bull; it is not for a man of sense to dispute the road with such an animal.”