In giving this account of Rose’s singular openness and candor, Senator Pickering did not repeat his own remarks in the conversation; but they could be inferred from the rest of his letter. “I wrote last week to Mr. Cabot that I had the best authority for saying that our Government had abandoned the ground taken in London,--to treat of the ‘Chesapeake’ affair only in connection with the old subjects of dispute. They have now determined to negotiate on this separately, and even say that it is an affair by itself and ought to be so treated. Perhaps they may demand that Admiral Berkeley be brought to a British court-martial,--that at any rate he be removed from command; and that the three rascals of deserters who remain unhung should be restored. “_Confidence_ now seems to be in Mr. Jefferson’s hands as effectual in producing a compliance with his recommendations as soldiers in the hands of Bonaparte in procuring submission to his commands. With the like implicit, blind confidence which enacted the Embargo, the legislatures of Virginia and Maryland have approved it. To this day if you ask any member of Congress the cause and the object of the Embargo, he can give no answer which common-sense does not spurn at. I have reason to believe that Mr. Jefferson expected to get some credit for it by having it ready just in time to meet the retaliating order of England for Napoleon’s decree of Nov. 21, 1806. With much solicitude he, two or three weeks ago, expressed his wonder that it did not arrive, apparently desiring it as a material justification with the people for the Embargo. He will doubtless be utterly disappointed.” That Jefferson in recommending the Embargo had the Orders in Council in his mind was therefore known to Pickering,[144] and was the general talk of Federalists in Washington during the month which followed the Embargo Act; but the orders themselves reached America only the day after this letter was written, and were published in the “National Intelligencer” of January 22. In full view of the official command that American trade with Europe should pass through British ports and pay duty to the British 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.[145] Neither decision nor debate on so serious a point could be profitably undertaken before the result of Rose’s diplomacy should be revealed.