Lord Wellesley was in character to the full as arbitrary as George Canning. Seven years of imperial power in India had trained him in habits of autocratic authority; but he was a man of breeding, courteous, dignified, and considerate of others’ dignity. In India he had shown what Canning thought himself to possess,--the hand of iron in the velvet glove. Without a tinge of Canning’s besetting vice, the passion to be clever, Wellesley never fell into the fault of putting sarcasms or epigrams into his state papers. So little offensive was he in manner, that although he brought about a war between England and the United States no American held him as an enemy, or retained so much ill-feeling toward him as to make even his name familiar to American ears. In truth his subordinate position in the Government prevented the exercise of his powers, and left him no opportunity to develop the force of that character which had crushed Tippoo Sultaun and tamed the Mahrattas. His colleagues allowed him to show only the weaknesses of a strong nature, which may have been increased to vices by the exhaustion of eight years’ severe labor in an Indian climate. What he might have done had he taken Perceval’s place no one can say; what he did or failed to do is more easily told. When Pinkney came to explain the President’s action and wishes in regard to Jackson, Wellesley, in a manner that seemed to the American minister both frank and friendly, showed only the wish to conciliate. In a short time Pinkney became so intimate with the new Foreign Secretary as to excite comment. Nothing could be more encouraging than his reports to the President of the change in disposition which had come over the Foreign Office. Jan. 2, 1810, Pinkney, in a long note, explained to Wellesley the President’s reasons for breaking off relations with Jackson.[220] His tone was conciliatory, professing only the wish for friendly accommodation; and Wellesley on his side not only received the note without objection, but encouraged the hope that the President’s wishes would be gratified. Pinkney reported that in conversation Lord Wellesley had promised at once to send out a new envoy of diplomatic rank; to lose no time in settling the “Chesapeake” affair; and afterward to take up the commercial questions which had made the substance of Monroe’s treaty three years before. The cordiality of these promises satisfied Pinkney that they were not meant to deceive. If any one was deceived, the victim was not Pinkney but Wellesley himself, who overrated his own power and underrated the inert resistance of Spencer Perceval and the army of selfish interests at his back. Even Jackson’s affair was not easily managed. Jackson could not be disavowed, for he had done nothing more than his orders required him to do; nor could a new minister be appointed until the year elapsed which Canning promised for the term of Jackson’s mission. Between Canning on one side and Perceval on the other, Wellesley found himself