“This advocate,” replied Smith (in the “Baltimore American”) to Barlow (in the Washington “Intelligencer”), “would have us believe that many persons both in and out of Congress thought that Mr. Smith from want of talents and integrity was quite unfit for the Department of State, and that his appointment was the effect of an intrigue. Were there any truth in this remark, it could not fail to convince every person of the utter unfitness of Mr. Madison himself for _his_ office. It in plain English says that from the officious persuasion of a few intriguers he had appointed to the most important and the highest station in the government a person without talents and without integrity; and this person not a stranger, respecting whom he might have been misled, but one who had been his colleague in office during the long term of eight years, and of whose fitness he of course had better means of judging than any other person or persons whatever; nay, more,--to this same person, without talents or integrity, was offered by Mr. Madison not only the mission to Russia, but the important office of the Treasury Department.” CHAPTER XVIII. APRIL 1, 1811, Monroe took charge of the State Department. The first person to claim his attention was the French Emperor, and Monroe had reasons for knowing that diplomatists of reputed sagacity found use for uninterrupted attention when they undertook to deal with Napoleon. Monroe stood in a situation of extreme difficulty, hampered not only by the pledges of his own government, but still more by the difficulty of dealing at all with the government of France. When Armstrong quitted Paris in September, 1810, being obliged to fix upon some American competent to take charge of the legation at Paris, he chose Jonathan Russell. The selection was the best he could make. Jonathan Russell possessed advantages over ordinary ministers coming directly from America. A native of Rhode Island, educated at Brown University, after leaving college he followed the business of a merchant, and in November, 1809, sailed from Boston in a ship of his own, which arrived at Tönning in Denmark only to be at once sequestered under Napoleon’s Decrees. He passed several months in efforts to recover the property, and acquired experience in the process. About forty years old, and more or less acquainted with the people, politics, and languages of Europe, he was better fitted than any secretary of legation then abroad for the burden that Armstrong had found intolerable; yet the oldest and ablest diplomatist America ever sent to Europe might have despaired of effecting any good result with such means as were at the disposal of this temporary agent, who had not even the support of a direct commission from the President.