Talavera and Flushing closed Castlereagh’s career in the War Office, as Jackson’s mission closed that of Canning in American diplomacy. Defeat abroad, ruin at home, disgrace and disaster everywhere were the results of two years of Tory administration. August 11 the Duke of Portland was struck by paralysis; and deprived of its chief, the Cabinet went to pieces. September 7 Castlereagh was gently forced to resign. Canning, refusing to serve under Perceval or under any one whom Perceval suggested, tendered his own resignation. In the course of the complicated negotiations that followed, Perceval showed to Castlereagh letters in which for a year past Canning had pressed Castlereagh’s removal from office. Then at last Castlereagh discovered, as he conceived, that Canning was not a gentleman or a man of honor, and having called him out, September 21, in a duel on Putney Heath shot him through the thigh. Such an outcome was a natural result of such an Administration; but as concerned the United States Canning had already done all the harm possible, and more than three generations could wholly repair. CHAPTER VI. THE news of Erskine’s disavowal reached America so slowly that merchants enjoyed three months of unrestricted trade, and shipped to England or elsewhere the accumulations of nearly two years’ produce. From April 21 till July 21 this process of depletion continued without an anxiety; and when July 21 news arrived that the arrangement had been repudiated, merchants still had time to hurry their last cargoes to sea before the government could again interpose. The first effect of Canning’s disavowal seemed bewilderment. No one in the United States, whether enemy or friend of England, could for a time understand why Canning had taken so perplexing a course. Very few of England’s friends could believe that her conduct rested on the motives she avowed; they sought for some noble, or at least some respectable, object behind her acts. For several months the Federalist newspapers were at a loss for words, and groped in the dark for an English hand to help them; while the Republican press broke into anger, which expressed the common popular feeling. “The late conduct of the British ministry,” said the “National Intelligencer” of July 26, “has capped the climax of atrocity toward this country.” Every hope of reconciliation or even of peace with England seemed almost extinguished; yet the country was still far from a rupture. Not until popular feeling could express itself in a new election would the national will be felt; and the next election was still more than a year away, while the Congress to be then chosen would meet only in December, 1811. Until then war was improbable, perhaps impossible, except by the act of England.