For two years Canning had lost no opportunity of charging the American government with subservience to Napoleon; even in these instructions he alleged Jefferson’s “manifest partiality” to France as a reason why England could entertain no propositions coming from him. He had in his hands Madison’s emphatic threats of war; how then could he conceive of obtaining from Madison an express recognition of the British Rule of 1756, which Madison had most deeply pledged himself to resist? On the other hand, Canning showed forbearance and a wish for peace, by leaving Erskine minister at Washington as well as by passing unnoticed Madison’s threats of war; and he betrayed a singular incapacity to understand the bearing of his own demands when he directed Erskine to communicate his instructions _in extenso_ to the American government. Had he intelligently acted in bad faith, he would not have given the President, whose attachment to France he suspected, the advantage of seeing these instructions, which required that America should become a subject State of England. Perhaps a partial clew to these seeming contradictions might be found in the peculiar traits of Canning’s character. He belonged to a class of men denied the faculty of realizing the sensibilities of others. At the moment when he took this tone of authority toward America, he gave mortal offence to his own colleague Lord Castlereagh, by assuming a like attitude toward him. He could not understand, and he could never train himself to regard, the rule that such an attitude between States as between gentlemen was not admitted among equals. Whatever was the reason of Canning’s conduct, its effect was that of creating the impression of bad faith by offering terms intended to be refused. The effect of bad faith was the more certain because the instructions closed by giving Erskine some latitude, not as to the conditions which were to be distinctly and officially recognized, but as to the form in which the recognition might be required:-- “Upon the receipt here of an official note containing an engagement for the adoption of the three conditions above specified, his Majesty will be prepared on the faith of such engagement,--either immediately, if the repeal shall have been immediate in America or on any day specified by the American government for that repeal,--reciprocally to recall the Orders in Council.” The form of the required engagement was left to Erskine’s discretion; and in case Erskine failed, Canning would be still at liberty to claim, as he afterward did, that his conditions were not so rigorously meant as Erskine should have supposed them to be.