Although Madison pressed the necessity of an immediate understanding on these points, he did so in his usual temperate and conciliatory manner; while Merry frankly avowed that he could give no hopes of such propositions being listened to. He did this the more decisively because Congress seemed about to take the matter of impressments into its own hands, and was already debating a Bill for the protection of seamen by measures which tended to hostilities. Madison disavowed responsibility for the legislation, although he defended it in principle.[283] Merry contented himself for the time by saying that if the United States government sought their remedy in municipal law, the matter would immediately cease to be a subject of negotiation. Thus, in one short month, the two governments were brought to what the British minister supposed to be the verge of rupture. That any government should take so well-considered a position without meaning to support it by acts, was not probable. Acts of some kind, more or less hostile in their nature, were certainly intended by the United States government in case Great Britain should persist in contempt for neutral rights; the sudden change of tone at Washington left no doubt on this point. Edward Thornton, who had not yet been transferred to another post, wrote in consternation to the Foreign Office, fearing that blame might be attached to his own conduct while in charge of the legation:[284]-- “When I compare the complexion of Mr. Merry’s correspondence with that of my own, particularly during the course of the last summer, before the intelligence of the Louisiana purchase reached this country, I can scarcely credit the testimony of my own senses in examining the turn which affairs have taken, and the manifest ill-will discovered toward us by the Government at the present moment.... I believe that the simple truth of the case is, after all, the circumstance ... that a real change has taken place in the views of this Government, which may be dated from the first arrival of the intelligence relative to the Louisiana purchase, and which has since derived additional force and acrimony from the opinion that Great Britain cannot resist, under her present pressure, the new claims of the United States, and now, from the necessity they are under of recurring to the influence of France in order to support their demands against Spain.... The cession of Louisiana, notwithstanding that the circumstances under which it was made ought to convince the vainest of men that he was not the sole agent in the transaction, has elevated the President beyond imagination in his own opinion; and I have no doubt that he thinks of securing himself at the next election by having to boast of concessions and advantages derived from us, similar to those he has gained from France,--that is, great in appearance, and at a comparatively insignificant expense.”