unable to act, and resorted to delays. Not until March 14 did Pinkney receive the promised reply[221] to his note of January 2; and this reply was not all that Wellesley had given him to expect. Compared with Canning’s notes, Wellesley’s letter might be called affectionate; but it was less definite than Pinkney would have liked. His Majesty, said Wellesley, regretted that the President should have interrupted communications before his Majesty could manifest his invariable disposition to maintain the relations of amity with the United States. Mr. Jackson had most positively assured his Government that it was not his purpose to give offence by anything he said or did; in such cases the usual course would have been to convey a formal complaint, which would have prevented the inconvenience of a suspension of relations. Yet his Majesty, always disposed to pay the utmost attention to the wishes and sentiments of States in amity with him, had directed the return of Mr. Jackson, though without marking his conduct with any expression of displeasure, inasmuch as Mr. Jackson’s “integrity, zeal, and ability have long been distinguished in his Majesty’s service,” and he seemed to have committed no intentional offence on the present occasion. Jackson was ordered to deliver his charge into the hands of a properly qualified person, while his Majesty “would receive, with sentiments of undiminished amity and good-will, any communication which the Government of the United States may deem beneficial to the mutual interests of both countries.” This was but Canning once more, without the sarcasm. With his grand air of sultan and viceroy, Wellesley ignored the existence of complaints, and professed himself “ready to receive, with sentiments of undiminished amity and good-will, any communication which the Government of the United States may deem beneficial;” but when his course led, two years afterward, to the only communication which could logically result,--a declaration of war,--Wellesley declared in Parliament[222] “that a more unjust attack was never made upon the peace of any nation than that of the American government upon England;” and that “the American government had been long infected with a deadly hatred toward this country, and (if he might be allowed an unusual application of a word) with a deadly affection toward France.” He blamed only his own colleagues, who “ought in fact to have expected and been fully prepared for war with America.”