The task he had set for himself was hopeless, not so much because of the concessions he was to require, as on account of the change in European affairs which made England indifferent for the moment to any injury the United States could inflict. Monroe’s instructions to the new commission, though long, consisted largely in arguments against the legality of impressment as a part of the _jus gentium_; although the legality of European war-measures had long ceased to be worth discussing. As the solution of the dispute, Monroe could offer only the new Foreign Seamen Act, which England had refused from the first to consider, and which was certainly open to objections,--on the American side because it offered too much; on the British side because it offered more than could in practice be performed. To make the utmost possible concession, Monroe proposed that no native-born British subject, thenceforward naturalized in America, should be allowed to serve either in the national or the private vessels of the United States,--a provision which carried one step further the offer to naturalize no British seamen except on condition of leaving the sea, and which went to the verge of conceding the right of impressment. Notwithstanding these concessions, the instructions were still positive on the main point. Without a clear and distinct stipulation against impressments, no treaty was to be signed; negotiations must cease, and the negotiators must return home.[32] CHAPTER III. During the winter the Republican legislature of New York chose Rufus King, the chief Federalist in the country, to succeed John Smith as United States senator. Some Republicans charged that this election was the price paid by De Witt Clinton for Federalist votes in the Presidential contest; but Clinton’s friends declared it to be the price paid by the Administration Republicans for Federalist aid in granting a corrupt bank charter. That the choice was due to a bargain of some kind no one denied, and possibly both stories were true. Rufus King himself stood above suspicion, and had been considered an opponent of the Federalist alliance with Clinton; but he was a powerful recruit to the opposition in the Senate, which numbered thenceforward nine votes, or precisely one fourth of the body. The annoyance to the Administration was the greater because King’s Republican colleague, Obadiah German, belonged to the Clintonian opposition, and voted with the Federalists. At the same time Charles Cutts of New Hampshire was succeeded by Jeremiah Mason, a very able and extreme Federalist. Three more senators--Giles, Samuel Smith, and Michael Leib--could be counted as personally hostile to the President. Jesse Franklin of North Carolina was succeeded by David Stone, an independent, opposed to the war. Already the opposition threatened to outweigh the votes on which the President could depend. As though legislation had become a matter of inferior importance, William H. Crawford of Georgia, the