Even these terms, Gallatin added, depended on American success in withstanding the shock of the campaign. He did not say that at the time he wrote, the _status ante bellum_ would be scouted by public opinion in England as favorable to the United States; but his estimate of the situation was more nearly exact than though he had consulted only the apparent passions of the British press. “Lord Castlereagh,” wrote Gallatin to Clay,[12] “is, according to the best information I can collect, the best disposed man in the Cabinet.” Yet Castlereagh did not venture at that stage to show a disposition for peace. He delayed the negotiation, perhaps wisely, six weeks after the American negotiators had assembled at Ghent; and his instructions[13] to the British commissioners, dated July 28, reflected the demands of the press. They offered, not the _status ante bellum_, but the _uti possidetis_, as the starting-point of negotiation. “The state of possession must be considered as the territorial arrangement which would revive upon a peace, except so far as the same may be modified by any new treaty.” The state of possession, in view of the orders that had then been given, or were to be given, for the invasion of the United States, was likely to cost the Americans half of Maine, between the Penobscot and the Passamaquoddy; Plattsburg, and the northern part of New York, Vermont, and New Hampshire; Fort Niagara, Mackinaw, and possibly New Orleans and Mobile. Besides this concession of the _uti possidetis_, or military occupation at the date of peace, the Americans were required at the outset to admit as a _sine qua non_, or condition precedent to any negotiation, that England’s Indian allies, the tribes of the Northwestern Territory, should be included in the pacification, and that a definite boundary should be assigned to them under a mutual guaranty of both Powers. Eastport, or Moose Island, and the fishing privileges were to be regarded as British. With these instructions of July 28, the British commissioners, early in August, started for Ghent.