Page:Henry Adams' History of the United States Vol. 4.djvu/197

1808. Treasury, doubt as to the wisdom of an Embargo seemed at an end. No further dispute appeared possible except on the question whether or when the Embargo should be raised in order to declare war. Already, January 11, Senator Adams offered a Resolution for appointing a committee to consider and report when the Embargo could be taken off and vessels permitted to arm; but the Senate silently rejected the Resolution, January 21, by a vote of seventeen to ten. Neither decision nor debate on so serious a point could be profitably undertaken before the result of Rose's diplomacy should be revealed.

Saturday, January 16, before meeting Senator Pickering at dinner, Rose had delicately explained to Madison that the President's "Chesapeake" proclamation was likely to prove a stumbling-block. In conversations which consumed another week he urged its withdrawal, while Madison replied that the exclusion of British ships was not a punishment but a precaution, that the "Leopard's" attack was but one of its causes, and that it was a measure taken in the interests of peace. Argument against Canning's positive instructions answered no purpose. Rose could not give way, and when he had been one week in Washington, January 21, the negotiation was already at a stand-still. There it would under any other Administration have been permitted to remain. Rose had come to offer an apology and to restore the captured seamen. He had only to do this and go home.