“It remains for me,” he continued, “to notice the expressions, so full of disrespect to his Majesty, with which that note concludes; and I am to signify to you the displeasure which his Majesty feels that any minister of his Majesty should have shown himself so far insensible of what is due to the dignity of his sovereign as to have consented to receive and transmit a note in which such expressions were contained.” Canning was hardly the proper person to criticise Robert Smith’s disrespectful expressions, which, whatever their intention, failed to be nearly as offensive as many of his own; but this was a matter between himself and Erskine. Even after granting the propriety of his comment, diplomatic usage seemed to require that some demand of explanation or apology from the American government should precede the rejection of an engagement otherwise satisfactory; but no such step was in this case taken through Erskine. His settlement of the “Chesapeake” outrage was repudiated without more words, and the next day Canning repudiated the rest of the arrangement. Nothing could be easier than to show that Erskine had violated his instructions more plainly in regard to the Orders in Council than in regard to the “Chesapeake” affair. Of the three conditions imposed by Canning, not one had been fulfilled. The first required the repeal of all Non-intercourse Acts against England, “leaving them in force with respect to France;” but Erskine had doubly failed to secure it:[72]-- “As the matter at present stands before the world in your official correspondence with Mr. Smith, the American government would be at liberty to-morrow to repeal the Non-intercourse Act altogether, without infringing the agreement which you have thought proper to enter into on behalf of his Majesty; and if such a clause was thought necessary to this condition at the time when my instructions were written, it was obviously become much more so when the Non-intercourse Act was passed for a limited time. You must also have been aware at the time of making the agreement that the American government had in fact formally exempted Holland, a Power which has unquestionably ‘adopted and acted under the Decrees of France,’ from the operation of the Non-intercourse Act,--an exemption in direct contravention of the condition prescribed to you, and which of itself ought to have prevented you from coming to any agreement whatever.”