The more closely the subject was studied the more clearly it appeared that Monroe had to all appearance knowingly embarrassed the Administration by signing a treaty in contravention of the President’s orders; but Jefferson added unnecessarily to his embarrassment by refusing the treaty before he read it. Tacit abandonment of impressments was the utmost concession that the President could hope from England, and even this he must probably fight for; yet he refused to consult the Senate on the merits of Monroe’s treaty for a reason which would have caused the withholding of every treaty ever made with England. That the public should be satisfied with this imperious treatment was an extravagant demand. No act of Jefferson’s administration exposed him to more misinterpretation, or more stimulated a belief in his hatred of England and of commerce, than his refusal to lay Monroe’s treaty before the Senate. Perhaps the President would have been less decided had he known at first how faulty the treaty was. Not until it had been studied for weeks did all its faults become evident; and not until it was read in the light of Lord Howick’s Order in Council did its character admit of no more doubt. When news of this order reached Washington, about ten days after the treaty, Madison wrote to Erskine a letter[307] which showed an effort to treat the new restriction of neutral trade as though it might have some shadow of legality in the background, and as though it were not directed solely against America; but the truth soon became too evident for such mild treatment, and Madison was obliged ten days afterward to interrupt his study of Monroe’s treaty in order to tell Erskine that the operation of the new order “would be a proceeding as ruinous to our commerce as contrary to our essential rights.”[308]