he continues, "would
be the greatest loser by such an event, and not likely therefore
deliberately to rush into it." "On what basis," he asks, "could New
England and Old England form commercial stipulations?" Their commercial
jealousy, he contends, forbade an alliance between them, for that was
"the real source of our Revolution." He closes with the significant
assertion that, "if there be links of common interest between the two
countries, they would connect the Southern and not the Northern States
with that part of Europe." How, then, could he seriously accept Henry's
pretended disclosures as "formal proof," as he wrote to Jefferson at
that time, "of the cooperation between the Eastern Junto and the British
cabinet"? By the Eastern Junto is meant the Federal party, or at least
the influential and able leaders of that party; and he could not
consider, nor would he have spoken of them as "a few individuals, if
such there be, in desperate situations or of unbridled passions." He
accepted, then, the Henry story in spite of his deliberate opinions, as
a help to involve the country in a party war.

Even at the risk of some prolixity it is needful to follow the course of
events that led to this war a little farther; for here was the
culmination of Mr. Madison's career, and from his course in shaping and
directing these events we best learn what manner of man he was, and
where his true place is among the public men of our earlier history. For
a year and a half the United States had acted on the assumption that
France had recalled her decrees, and that England had not revoked her
orders. The extracts from Mr. Madison's letters, given on previous
pages, show his conviction that the revocation of either decrees or
orders was practically no more true of one power than it was of the
other. The government of the United States, nevertheless, submitted to
the one, and against the other it first reenacted the non-intercourse
act, then proclaimed an embargo preparatory to war, and finally declared
war. Yet the whole world knew, and nobody so surely as the emperor of
France, that the Berlin and Milan decrees had never been formally
repealed at all; meanwhile French outrages upon American commerce had
continued, and all redress so persistently refused that, so late as the
last week in February, 1812, the President intimated that war--war with
France, not England--might prove the only remedy. But he suddenly
yielded to the clamors of the