“I fear, if the system of policy which has been so long persevered in, after so many proofs of its dangerous tendency, is still adhered to, that a crisis will arise the dangers of which will require all the virtue, firmness, and talents of our country to avert. And that it will be persevered in seems too probable while the present men remain in power.... And if the blame of improvident and injudicious measures is ever to attach to them among the people, it must be by leaving to the authors of those measures the entire responsibility belonging to them.” Within six weeks after this letter had been written, Monroe was asked to join the men in power, and to share the blame of those “improvident and injudicious measures,” the responsibility for which ought, as he conceived, to be left entirely to their authors. He wrote at once to Colonel Taylor for advice; and the reply threw much light on the personal and public motives supposed to guide the new Secretary of State. Colonel Taylor advised Monroe to accept the President’s invitation, for several reasons.[288] Assuming that Monroe was to succeed Madison as the next Republican candidate for the Presidency, he took for granted that Monroe was to follow the lines of his old opinions, and to correct Madison’s leanings toward France. “Our foreign relations,” continued Taylor, “seem to be drawing to a crisis, and you ought to be in the public eye when it happens, for your own sake, independently of the services you can render your country. It is probable that this crisis will occur on a full discovery that France will not do our commerce any substantial good without an equivalent which would amount to its destruction. So soon as this discovery is made, the Government, in all its departments, will alter its policy, and your occupancy of a conspicuous station will shed upon you the glory of its having come round to your opinion.” Colonel Taylor gave no thought to the opposite possibility that Monroe might come round to the opinion of the Government; yet his argument seemed to place Monroe in a position where, if he could not convert Madison, he would have no choice but to let Madison convert him.