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thorized Gallatin to take a similar attitude in his negotiation 
of 1826-27.^^ 
The new note was sounded when Van Buren instructed 
McLane to inform the British Government, in case the latter 
declined to reopen the negotiations because of the omission 
of the United States to accept the terms proposed when offered 
earlier, that the views held by the previous administration 
had been repudiated by the American people. He wrote: 
Their views upon that point have been submitted to the people of 
the United States, and the counsels by which your conduct is now di- 
rected are the result of the judgment expressed by the only earthly 
tribunal to which the late Administration was amenable for its acts. It 
should be sufficient that the claims set up by them, and which caused 
the interruption of the trade in question have been explicitly abandoned 
by those who first asserted them, and are not revived by their successors. 
To set up acts of the late Administration as the cause of the forfeiture 
of privileges which would otherwise be extended to the people of the 
United States, would, under existing circumstances, be unjust in itself, 
and could not fail to excite their deepest sensibility.^" 
The American people were here introduced, in a character- 
istically Jacksonian way, as a judge who had condemned the 
course pursued by Jackson’s predecessor. Political opinion in 
the United States was invoked as a reason for seeking con- 
cessions abroad. Webster denounced the instructions as de- 
rogatory to the character and honor of the United States. He 
maintained that they revealed a manifest disposition on the 
part of the writer of them to establish a distinction between 
his country and his party, to place that party above the coun- 
try, to make interest at a foreign court for that party rather 
than for the country, to persuade the English ministry, and 
the English monarch, that they had an interest in maintaining 
in the United States the ascendency of the party to which the 
writer belonged.^^ Criticisms such as this later cost Van- 
Buren the position of minister to Great Britain. At that time, 
Jackson admitted that this much of the instructions had pro- 
ceeded from his own suggestion and had been the result of his 
own deliberate investigation and reflection. He defended 
them on the ground that the United States should not suffer 
continued injury or injustice simply because a former admin- 
istration had insisted upon terms which it had subsequently 
See above, p. 149. 
^2 Senate Docs., 21 Cong., 2 Sess., I, No. 20, p. 11. 
Register of Debates, VIII, Part 1, 1329. Works of Daniel Webster, III, 357. 
