“However timid Mr. Jefferson may be,” wrote Pichon to Talleyrand,[178] “and whatever price he may put on his pacific policy, one cannot foresee precisely what his answer will be.... I find in general a bad temper as regards us; and I cannot help seeing that there is a tendency toward adopting an irrevocably hostile system. This circumstance will be decisive for Mr. Jefferson. If he acts feebly, he is lost among his partisans; it will be then the time for Mr. Burr to show himself with advantage.” Thornton watched with equal anxiety the movement which promised to throw the United States into the arms of England. He expected as little as Pichon that the President would act with energy, but he hoped that the situation would force him into taking a side.[179] “From the language of his ministers, and from the insinuations of some members of the Federal party, it will not be, I doubt, such a measure of vigor as would place the country on a commanding ground in the negotiation with Spain, or eventually with France; and the latter persons have some of them designated it to me as likely to be a very foolish thing.” Five days passed before Jefferson answered the call of the House; and when he did so, he sent papers which might have been prepared in five minutes, for most of them had been long printed in the newspapers.[180] In communicating these documents, the President added that he had not lost a moment in causing every step to be taken which the occasion claimed from him; but he did not say what these steps were. A week later he sent another document, which he requested the House to return without publication;[181] it was a letter which Governor Claiborne had received from Governor Salcedo, denying responsibility for the Intendant’s act, and asserting that it was not authorized by the Spanish government. The House shut its doors and debated a week. Then it reopened its doors, and announced to the world that by a party vote of fifty to twenty-five, the following resolution had been adopted:[182]-- “Adhering to that humane and wise policy which ought ever to characterize a free people, and by which the United States have always professed to be governed; willing at the same time to ascribe this breach of compact to the unauthorized misconduct of certain individuals rather than to a want of good faith on the part of his Catholic Majesty; and relying with perfect confidence on the vigilance and wisdom of the Executive,--they will wait the issue of such measures as that department of the Government shall have pursued for asserting the rights and vindicating the injuries of the United States.”