“‘Believe me,’ said Mr. Monroe in finishing, and as we were about to separate, ‘the American government will not be inconsequent; but its patience is exhausted, and as regards foreign Powers it is determined to make itself respected. People in Europe suppose us to be merchants, occupied exclusively with pepper and ginger. They are much deceived, and I hope we shall prove it. The immense majority of citizens do not belong to this class, and are, as much as your Europeans, controlled by principles of honor and dignity. I never knew what trade was. The President is as much of a stranger to it as I; and we accord to commerce only the protection that we owe it, as every government owes it to an interesting class of its citizens.’” Commerce would have listened with more amusement than conviction to Monroe’s ideas on the “principles of honor and dignity” which led a government of Virginia and Pennsylvania farmers to accord protection in the form of embargoes and non-intercourses to commerce which it distrusted and despised; but Monroe meant only that France, as well as England, must reckon on a new national spirit in Virginia,--a spirit which they had themselves roused, and for whose bad qualities they had only themselves to blame. Yet Monroe found himself in an attitude not flattering to his pride. All his life a representative of the Virginia school,--more conservative than Jefferson, and only to be compared with John Randolph, and John Taylor of Caroline,--he had come to the State Department to enforce his own principles and overrule the President; but he found himself helpless in the President’s hands. That the contest was in reality between Monroe’s will and Madison’s became clear to Serurier; and that Monroe’s pliable nature must succumb to Madison’s pertinacity, backed as it was by authority, could not be doubtful. Six months seemed to Virginians a short time for Monroe’s submission, but in truth Monroe had submitted long before; his rebellion itself had been due to William Pinkney and John Randolph rather than to impulses of his own; he regretted it almost as soon as it was made, and he suffered little in allowing Madison to control the course of events. Yet he would certainly have preferred another result, and his interview with Serurier, July 9, recorded the policy he had meant to impose, while preparing for its abandonment. The secretary waited only for a pretext to accept Madison’s dogma that the French Decrees were withdrawn, although his conversations with Serurier proved his conviction to the contrary. A few days later, a vessel arrived from England bringing unofficial news from France, to May 24, that the Emperor had released the American vessels kept in sequestration since November 1, and had admitted their cargoes for sale. Without the form of further struggle, Monroe followed the footsteps of his predecessor.