These instructions did not warrant Pinkney in demanding leave of absence on any other ground than that of failure to appoint a minister at Washington. They did not warrant him in returning to America at all if he saw the possibility of such an appointment. Pinkney was obliged to put a free construction on the President’s language. Abandoning the ground that his departure was a necessary result of the absence of a British minister at Washington, he asked Lord Wellesley, in an official note, dated February 17, what Mr. Foster was to do when he arrived there?[17] “I presume that for the restoration of harmony between the two countries, the Orders in Council will be relinquished without delay; that the blockade of 1806 will be annulled; that the case of the ‘Chesapeake’ will be arranged in the manner heretofore intended; and in general that all such just and reasonable acts will be done as are necessary to make us friends.” So important a letter was probably never written by any other American diplomatist without instructions from his Government,--for it was in effect an ultimatum, preliminary to the rupture of relations and ultimate war; yet even in this final list of American demands made by the American minister in withdrawing from London, impressment was not expressly mentioned. Wellesley replied in a private letter[18] dated February 23, with the formal avowal that “it would be neither candid toward you, nor just toward this Government, to countenance any interpretation which might favor a supposition that it was intended by this Government to relinquish any of the principles which I have so often endeavored to explain to you.” Nothing in Wellesley’s letter showed a desire to irritate, and his refusals left less sting than was left by Canning’s concessions; but the issue was fairly joined, and America was at liberty to act upon it as she pleased. In order to leave no doubt of his meaning, Pinkney instantly[19] claimed his audience of leave for February 28, declining, in the mean time, to attend the diplomatic levee which by postponement took place only February 26. His conduct was noticed and understood, as he meant it should be; and as his audience still remains the only occasion when an American minister at London has broken relations in a hostile manner, with resulting war, it has an interest peculiar to itself. Several accounts were preserved of what passed at the interview. Pinkney’s official report recorded the words used by him:[20]--