Robert Smith was a wearisome burden to Madison, and his incompetence made no agreeable object of study; but his apparent bewilderment at Jackson’s audacity was almost as instructive as the sincere astonishment of the Englishman at the effect of his own words. The game of cross-purposes could not be more naturally played. Robert Smith had been requested by Madison to ascertain precisely what Jackson’s instructions were; and both at the first and at a second interview he pressed this point, always trying to discover what Jackson had to offer, while the Englishman always declined to offer anything whatever. Two conversations satisfied the President that Jackson’s hands were fast tied, and that he could open no door of escape. Then Madison gently set the Secretary of State aside, and, as openly as the office of Chief Magistrate permitted, undertook to deal with the British minister. October 9 the Secretary of State sent to the British Legation a formal letter, written, like all Robert Smith’s important papers, by the President.[92] After recapitulating the negative results reached in the two interviews, Jackson was asked whether he had been rightly understood; and the letter ended by saying, that, “to avoid the misconceptions incident to oral proceeding, I have also the honor to intimate that it is thought expedient that our further discussions on the present occasion be in the written form.”[93] Jackson saw a challenge in this change of attitude, and undertook to meet it by vigorous resistance. He had no mind to be thrown on the defensive; as he wrote to Canning, he wished to teach the American government not to presume on his patience. “On connecting all these circumstances,” he reported,[94]--“the manner in which Mr. Smith had conducted our conferences; the abruptness, especially, with which he had put an end to them; and the style in which he announces to me, without leaving any choice or alternative, but as the absolute decision of his Government, ‘that it is thought expedient that our future discussions on the present occasion’ (_i. e._, the only occasion of doing away existing differences) ‘should be in the written form,’--it occurred to me to be necessary to put the matter on such a footing as to preclude, _in limine_, the idea that every species of indirect obloquy was to be patiently submitted to by his Majesty’s minister in this country.”