A less provocative Message than that with which Jackson opened the Congress could hardly have been penned. It was conciliatory and in good taste. But Clay’s voice was for war. It was his determination that something should “turn up,” if he had to turn it up, for the purposes of the election, and he had instilled his spirit into his followers. Instantly the gage of battle was thrown down in the consideration of the nomination of Van Buren as Minister to England. A pettier piece of party politics is scarcely found in the history of the Senate. Among all the Opposition Senators, there were probably none who doubted his capacity or questioned his integrity. With the Calhoun faction it was personal spite; with Clay, Webster, and Clayton it was partisan spleen. Six months before, Van Buren had ridden out of Washington with Jackson by his side, and had sailed for England. In London he was at once received into the most brilliant society. He became an intimate of the Duke of Wellington, and Talleyrand, Ambassador from France, cultivated him, while Rogers, the poet, entertained him frequently at his famous breakfasts. He had been charged with an important mission--nothing less than the negotiation of an agreement that would prevent the recurrence of the causes of estrangement between the two peoples growing out of the occurrences incidental to England’s participation in European wars.[385] Welcomed to the most exclusive drawing-rooms, cultivated by the most powerful of English statesmen, with the prestige in London of having adjusted, while in the State Department, the long-standing differences relative to the West Indian trade, he was in position to achieve triumphs for his country when his nomination was sent to the Senate. And there, Clay, Webster, and Calhoun eagerly awaited its coming. They had been busily engaged for weeks in preparing the attack. Each drew all his particular friends into the conspiracy, many of them entering reluctantly rather than incur their displeasure. The charges against Van Buren were transparently political. The Calhoun faction were prepared to contend that he had engineered the quarrel of the President and the Vice-President and had disrupted the Cabinet. Clay’s special point was to be that he had introduced the policy of proscription, destined to destroy American institutions, and he was to join with Webster in viciously assailing him for his instructions to our Minister to England in the negotiations on the West Indian trade.