This was not the only occasion when Robert Smith showed himself to the French minister as restive under restraint. “I asked him,” reported Serurier at another time,[45] “what the Government expected to do if the English resented its pretension to the independence of its flag? ‘War,’ he replied with perfect frankness, ‘is the inevitable result of our position toward the English if they refuse to recognize our rights.’ Mr. Smith then admitted to me that his Government certainly had the best founded hope that the establishment of the regency in England would bring about a change of ministry and probably of system, and that the Orders in Council would be repealed; that in this case, neutral rights being re-established, the motive for all this discussion would cease. But he repeated to me that in the contrary case war would, in his eyes, be inevitable, and that the Americans, in deciding on this course, had perfectly foreseen where it would lead them, without being, on that account, deterred from a decision dictated by their honor or their interest.” These remarks were made February 17, the day when the President decided to accept Napoleon’s conditions; and they helped to convince Serurier that Robert Smith was more “continental,” or Napoleonic, than Gallatin. For this reason, when he heard that Gallatin had prevailed, and Smith was to take the Russian Mission, he wrote to his Government with regret:[46]-- “The Secretary of State has taken his resolution like a man of courage. Instead of sulking and going to intrigue in his province, he has preferred to remain attached to the government of his country, and to go for some time to enjoy the air of our Europe, whither his tastes lead him, and to reserve himself for more favorable circumstances. His frank and open character makes him generally regretted. I think he must have had a share at the time in the fit of energy which his Government has shown. His language was measured; but very certainly his system drew him much nearer to France than to England.” Perhaps Serurier was misled by Robert Smith’s habit of taking tone from the person nearest him; but as the French minister learned more of Monroe, his regrets for Smith became acute. “I regard as an evil,” he wrote, April 5,[47] “the removal of a man whose elevated views,--noble in foreign policy at least,--and whose decided character, might have given to affairs a direction which must be at least counteracted by his absence, and especially by the way in which his place is filled.”