In this temper all parties waited for the news from England, which could not long be delayed; until March 3, 1807, the last day of the session, a rumor reached the Capitol that a messenger had arrived at the British legation with a copy of the treaty negotiated by Pinkney and Monroe. The news was true. No sooner did Erskine receive the treaty than he hurried with it to Madison, “in hopes that he would be induced to persuade the President either to detain the Senate, which he has the power by the Constitution to do, or to give them notice that he should convene them again.” Unlike Merry, Erskine was anxious for a reconciliation between England and America; he tried honestly and over-zealously to bring the two governments into accord, but he found Madison not nearly so earnest as himself: “The first question he asked was, what had been determined on the point of impressment of seamen, claimed as British, out of American ships; and when I informed him that I had not perceived anything that directly referred to that question in any of the Articles of the copy of the treaty which I had received, he expressed the greatest astonishment and disappointment.... The note which was delivered in to the American commissioners, previous to the signature of the treaty, by Lords Holland and Auckland, relative to Bonaparte’s decree of November 21, particularly attracted his attention; and he observed that the note itself would have prevented, he was convinced, the ratification of the treaty, even if all the Articles of it had been satisfactory, and all the points settled upon the terms that had been required by their commissioners.”[303] At ten o’clock the same night the two Houses of Congress, when ready to adjourn, sent a joint committee to wait upon the President, who was unwell, and unable to go as usual to the Capitol. Dr. Mitchill, the senator from New York, a member of this committee, asked the President whether there would be a call of the Senate to consider the treaty.[304] “Certainly not,” replied Jefferson; and he added that “the only way he could account for our ministers having signed such a treaty under such circumstances was by supposing that in the first panic of the French imperial decree they had supposed a war to be inevitable, and that America must make common cause with England. He should, however, continue amicable relations with England, and continue the suspension of the Non-importation Act.”