Jackson himself sought the position, knowing its difficulties. May 23, the day of his appointment, he wrote privately to his brother in Spain: “I am about to enter upon a most delicate--I _hope_ not desperate--enterprise.”[79] At a later time, embittered by want of support from home, he complained that Canning had sent him on an errand which he knew to be impossible to perform.[80] So well understood between Canning and Jackson was the nature of the service, that Jackson asked and received as a condition of his acceptance the promise that his employment should last not less than twelve months.[81] The delicate enterprise of which he spoke could have been nothing more than that of preventing a rupture between England and America; but until he studied his instructions, he could hardly have known in its full extent how desperate this undertaking would be. Canning made no haste. Nearly two months elapsed before Jackson sailed. After correcting Erskine’s mistake and replacing the United States in their position under the Orders in Council of April 26, Canning, June 13, made a statement to the House of Commons. Declining to touch questions of general policy for the reason that negotiations were pending, he contented himself with satisfying the House that Erskine had acted contrary to instructions and deserved recall. James Stephen showed more clearly the spirit of Government by avowing the opinion “that America in all her proceedings had no wish to promote an impartial course with respect to France and this country.” The Whigs knew little or nothing of the true facts; Erskine’s conduct could not be defended; no one cared to point out that Canning left to America no dignified course but war, and public interest was once more concentrated with painful anxiety on the continent of Europe. America dropped from sight, and Canning’s last and worst acts toward the United States escaped notice or knowledge. The session of Parliament ended June 21, a week before the special session of Congress came to an end; and while England waited impatiently for news from Vienna, where Napoleon was making ready for the battle of Wagram, Canning drew up the instructions to Jackson,--the last of the series of papers by which, through the peculiar qualities of his style even more than by the violence of his acts, he embittered to a point that seemed altogether contrary to their nature a whole nation of Americans against the nation that gave them birth. If the famous phrase of Canning was ever in any sense true,--that he called a new world into existence to redress the balance of the old,--it was most nearly true in the sense that his instructions and letters forced the United States into a nationality of character which the war of the Revolution itself had failed to give them.