In the defence which Rose offered for thus disregarding his instructions, the cause of his embarrassment was plain. Duty required him to act as though England had hitherto endured with magnanimity the wrongs inflicted by America, but might find herself obliged soon to resent them. This attitude could have been maintained against ordinary forms of diplomacy, but Rose found himself stifled in the embraces of men whose hatred was necessary to warrant his instructions. He would gladly have assumed that Madison’s concessions and Robert Smith’s cajoleries were treacherous; but his Federalist friends, whose interests were actively English, assured him that if America could avoid a war with England, she would inevitably drift into a war with France. The temptation to show equal courtesy to that which was shown to him, the instinctive shrinking from a harsh act, the impossibility of obeying instructions without putting himself in the wrong, and finally perhaps an incapacity to understand the full humiliation implied in his unrevealed demands,--led him to give way, and to let Madison partially into the secret of Canning’s instructions. On the evening of February 5 Rose and Erskine went to the house of the Secretary, and a draft of the proposed proclamation was there offered to them and accepted. The next day, at the Department, Rose delicately began to reveal the further disavowals he was instructed to demand. Even then he seemed ashamed to betray the whole, but delayed and discussed, knowing that he had done too much or too little for the objects of his mission. Not until after repeated interviews did he at last, February 14, mention “with an apology for omitting it before, when he intended to do it,” that a disavowal of Commodore Barron would be required.[151] So cautious was Madison on his side that he offered to make a part of the required disavowals, provided these should be mutual. Rose declined this offer, but proposed nothing more, and seemed rather to invite a friendly failure of agreement. He ended the conversation of February 14 by addressing to Madison the usual words of rupture: “I will not dissemble that I leave you with the most painful impressions.”[152] February 16 Madison closed these informal interviews with the dry remark that the United States could not be expected to “make as it were an expiatory sacrifice to obtain redress, or beg for reparation.”[153] The delay had strengthened Rose by weakening the President. The embargo was beginning to work. That the people should long submit to it was impossible, reported Rose; even North Carolina was turning against it. Monroe’s influence made itself felt.