The morning before the inauguration, Adams called on Jefferson and discussed with him the policy to be pursued toward France. The idea had occurred to Adams that a good impression might be made by sending out a mission of extraordinary weight and dignity, and he wanted to know whether Jefferson himself would not be willing to head such a mission. Without checking Adams's friendly overtures, Jefferson soon brought him to agree that it would not be proper for the Vice-President to accept such a post. Adams then proposed that Madison should go. On March 6, Jefferson reported to Adams that Madison would not accept. Then for the first time, according to Adams's own account, he consulted a member of his Cabinet, supposed to be Wolcott although the name is not mentioned. Adams took over Washington's Cabinet as it was finally constituted after the retirement of Jefferson and Hamilton and the virtual expulsion of Randolph. The process of change had made it entirely Federalist in its political complexion, and entirely devoted to Washington and Hamilton in its personal sympathies. That Adams should have adopted it as his own Cabinet has been generally regarded as a blunder, but it was a natural step for him to take. To get as capable men to accept the portfolios as those then holding them would have been difficult, so averse had prominent men become to putting themselves in a position to be harried by Congress, with no effective means of explaining and justifying their conduct. Congress then had a prestige which it does not now possess, and its utterances then received consideration not now accorded. Whenever presidential electors were voted for directly by the people, the poll was small compared with the vote for members of Congress. Moreover, there was then a feeling that the Cabinet should be regarded as a bureaucracy, and for a long period this conception tended to give remarkable permanence to its composition. When the personal attachments of the Cabinet chiefs are considered, it is easy to imagine the dismay and consternation produced by the dealings of Adams with Jefferson. By the time Adams consulted the members of his Cabinet, they had become suspicious of his motives and distrustful of his character. Before long they were writing to Washington and Hamilton for advice, and were endeavoring to manage Adams by concerted action. In this course they had the cordial approval of leading Federalists, who would write privately to members of the Cabinet and give counsel as to procedure. Wolcott, a Federalist leader in Connecticut, warned his son, the Secretary of the Treasury, that Adams was "a man of great vanity, pretty capricious, of a very moderate share of prudence, and of far less real abilities than he believes himself to possess," so that "it will require a deal of address to render him the service which it will be essential for him to receive."