Such was the slowness of communication in those days that, when Congress reassembled at the regular session in November, no decisive news had arrived of the fate of the special mission.  Adams with proper prudence thought it would be wise to consider what should be done in case of failure.  On January 24, 1798, he addressed to the members of his Cabinet a letter requesting their views.  No record is preserved of the replies of the Secretaries of State and of the Treasury.  Lee, the Attorney-General, recommended a declaration of war.  McHenry, the Secretary of War, offered a series of seven propositions to be recommended to Congress:  1.  Permission to merchant ships to arm; 2.  The construction of twenty sloops of war; 3.  The completion of frigates already authorized; 4.  Grant to the President of authority to provide ships of the line, not exceeding ten, “by such means as he may judge best.” 5.  Suspension of the treaties with France; 6.  An army of sixteen thousand men, with provision for twenty thousand more should occasion demand; 7.  A loan and an adequate system of taxation.

These recommendations are substantially identical with those made by Hamilton in a letter to Pickering, and the presumption is strong that McHenry’s paper is a product of Hamilton’s influence, and that it had the concurrence of Pickering and Wolcott.  The suggestion that the President should be given discretionary authority in the matter of procuring ships of the line contemplated the possibility of obtaining them by transfer from England, not through formal alliance but as an incident of a cooeperation to be arranged by negotiation, whose objects would also include aid in placing a loan and permission for American ships to join British convoys.  This feature of McHenry’s recommendations could not be curried out Pickering soon informed Hamilton that the old animosities were still so active “in some breasts” that the plan of cooperation was impracticable.

Meanwhile the composite mission had accomplished nothing except to make clear the actual character of French policy.  When the envoys arrived in France, the Directory had found in Napoleon Bonaparte an instrument of power that was stunning Europe by its tremendous blows.  That instrument had not yet turned to the reorganization of France herself, and at the time it served the rapacious designs of the Directory.  Europe was looted wherever the arms of France prevailed, and the levying of tribute both on public and on private account was the order of the day.  Talleyrand was the Minister of Foreign Affairs, and he treated the envoys with a mixture of menace and cajolery.  It was a part of his tactics to sever the Republican member, Gerry, from his Federalist colleagues.  Gerry was weak enough to be caught by Talleyrand’s snare, and he was foolish enough to attribute the remonstrances of his colleagues to vanity.  “They were wounded,” he wrote, “by the manner in which they had been treated by the Government of