The American reply was sent to the British commissioners August 25, “and will bring the negotiation,” remarked J. Q. Adams, “very shortly to a close.”[24] The American commissioners prepared to quit Ghent and return to their several posts, while the British commissioners waited for instructions from London. Even Gallatin, who had clung to the hope that he could effect an arrangement, abandoned the idea, and believing that the British government had adopted a system of conquest, prepared for an immediate return to America.[25] Goulburn also notified his Government that the negotiation was not likely to continue, and reported some confidential warnings from Bayard that such conditions of peace would not only insure war, but would sacrifice the Federalist party. “It has not made the least impression upon me or upon my colleagues,” reported Goulburn to Bathurst.[26] At that point the negotiation remained stationary for two months, kept alive by Liverpool, Castlereagh, and Bathurst, while they waited for the result of their American campaign. The despatch of August 20 crossed the Atlantic, and was communicated to Congress October 10, together with all other papers connected with the negotiation; but not until October 25 did the American commissioners write again to their Government. CHAPTER II. THE British note of August 19 and the American rejoinder of August 24, brought about a situation where Lord Castlereagh’s influence could make itself felt. Castlereagh had signed the British instructions of July 28 and August 14,[27] and himself brought the latter to Ghent, where he passed August 19, before going to Paris on his way to the Congress at Vienna. He was at Ghent when Goulburn and his colleagues held their conference and wrote their note of August 19;[28] and he could not be supposed ignorant of their language or acts. Yet when he received at Paris letters from Goulburn, dated August 24 and 26,[29] he expressed annoyance that the American commissioners should have been allowed to place England in the attitude of continuing the war for purposes of conquest, and still more that the British commissioners should be willing to accept that issue and break off negotiation upon it. In a letter to Lord Bathurst, who took charge of the negotiation in his absence, Castlereagh suggested ideas altogether different from those till then advanced in England.[30]