interview[194] Canning made full use of the advantages given
him by his adversaries' method of presentation and action. "He said
that by the President's proclamation, and the seizure and detention of
some men who had landed on the coast to procure water, the Government
seemed to have taken redress into its own hands." To Monroe's
statement that "the suppression of the practice of impressment from
merchant vessels had been made indispensable by the late aggression,
for reasons which were sufficiently known to him," he retorted, "that
the late aggression was an act different in all respects to the
former practice; and ought not to be connected with it, as it showed a
disposition to make a particular incident, in which Great Britain was
in the wrong, instrumental to an accommodation in a case in which his
Government held a different doctrine." The remark went to the root of
the matter. This was what the Administration was trying to do. As
Madison afterwards put it to Rose, the President was desirous "of
converting a particular incident into an occasion for removing another
and more extensive source of danger to the harmony of the two
countries." This plausible rendering was not likely to recommend to a
resolute nation such a method of obtaining surrender of a claimed
right. The exclusion proclamation Monroe represented to be "a mere
measure of police indispensable for the preservation of order within
the United States." Canning declined to be shaken from his stand that
it was an exhibition of partiality against Great Britain, the vessels
of which alone were excluded, because of an outrage committed by one
of them outside of American waters. The time at which the proclamation
issued, and the incorporation in it of the "Chesapeake" incident, made
this view at least colorable.

This interview also was followed by an exchange of notes. Monroe's of
September 7, 1807, developed the American case and demand as already
given. That of Canning, September 23, stated as follows the dilemma
raised by the President's proclamation: Either it was an act of
partiality between England and France, the warships of the latter
being still admitted, or it was an act of retaliation for the
"Chesapeake" outrage, and so of the nature of redress, self-obtained,
it is true, but to be taken into account in estimating the reparation
which the British Government "acknowledged to have been originally
due."[195] To the request for explanation Monroe repli