According to Robert Smith’s subsequent account, the last sentence was added by Madison in opposition to his secretary’s wishes.[59] One of Madison’s peculiarities showed itself in these words, which endangered the success of all his efforts. If he wished a reconciliation, they were worse than useless; but if he wished a quarrel, he chose the right means. The President of the United States was charged with the duty of asserting in its full extent what was due to his own honor as representative of the Union; but he was not required, either by the laws of his country or by the custom of nations, to define the conduct which in his opinion best comported with what was due from his Britannic Majesty to the honor of England. That Erskine should have consented to receive such a note was matter for wonder, knowing as he did that Kings of England had never smiled on servants who allowed their sovereign’s honor to be questioned; and the public surprise was not lessened by his excuse. “It appeared to me,” he said,[60] “that if any indecorum could justly be attributed to the expressions in the official notes of this Government, the censure due would fall upon them; and that the public opinion would condemn their bad taste or want of propriety in coldly and ungraciously giving up what they considered as a right, but which they were not in a condition to enforce.” Under the impression that no “intention whatever existed in the mind of the President of the United States to convey a disrespectful meaning toward his Majesty by these expressions,” Erskine accepted them in silence, and Madison himself never understood that he had given cause of offence. Having thus disposed of the “Chesapeake” grievance, Erskine took up the Orders in Council.[61] His instructions were emphatic, and he was in effect ordered to communicate these instructions _in extenso_ to the President, for in such cases permission was equivalent to order. He disobeyed; in official sense he did not communicate his instructions at all. “I considered that it would be in vain,” he afterward said. This was his first exercise of discretion; and his second was more serious. After reading Canning’s repeated and positive orders to require from the American government “a distinct and official recognition” of three conditions, he decided to treat these orders as irrelevant. He knew that the President had no Constitutional power to bind Congress, even if Madison himself would patiently bear a single reading of three such impossible requirements, and that under these circumstances the negotiation had better never begin than end abruptly in anger. Erskine would have done better not to begin it; but he thought otherwise. Under more favorable circumstances, Monroe and Pinkney had made the same experiment in 1806. Canning offered to withdraw the Orders in Council, on three conditions precedent:--