“You intimate,” said Monroe to Brent, “that the situation of the country is such as to leave me no alternative. I am aware that our public affairs are far from being in a tranquil and secure state. I may add that there is much reason to fear that a crisis is approaching of a very dangerous tendency,--one which menaces the overthrow of the whole Republican party. Is the Administration impressed with this sentiment, and prepared to act on it? Are things in such a state as to allow the Administration to take the whole subject into consideration, and to provide for the safety of the country and of free government by such measures as circumstances may require, and a comprehensive view of them suggest? Or are we pledged by what is already done to remain spectators of the interior movement, in the expectation of some change abroad as the ground on which we are to act? I have no doubt, from my knowledge of the President and Mr. Gallatin,--with the former of whom I have been long and intimately connected in friendship, and for both of whom, in great and leading points of character, I have the highest consideration and respect,--that if I came into the Government the utmost cordiality would subsist between us, and that any opinions which I might entertain and express respecting our public affairs would receive, so far as circumstances would permit, all the attention to which they might be entitled; but if our course is fixed, and the destiny of our country dependent on arrangements already made, I do not perceive how it would be possible for me to render any service at this time in the general government.” If the President’s proclamation of Nov. 2, 1810, and the Act of Congress passed March 2, 1811, three weeks before Monroe wrote this letter, had not fixed the course and destiny of the country, instructions to Pinkney and Jonathan Russell--on which those two agents had already acted, and which would be the first papers to be read by Monroe as Secretary of State--seemed certainly to fix beyond recall the course about which Monroe inquired. Even a man more liberal than Madison in professions might have hesitated to say that the future secretary was free to break with France, or to enter on other arrangements with England than those already imposed. Monroe’s letter implied disapproval of the course hitherto taken, and a wish, if possible, to change it. Madison was well acquainted not only with Monroe’s opinions on foreign affairs, but also with those of Monroe’s friends, who held that the course taken by the President ought to be reversed; and with this knowledge of all the circumstances Madison replied[290] to Monroe’s inquiry:--