When Parliament met Jan. 21, 1808, the paroxysm of excitement which followed the “Chesapeake” affair and the attack on Copenhagen had begun to subside. War with America was less popular than it had been six months before. The “Morning Post”[261] exhorted the British public to maintain “that sublime pitch” from which all opposition was to be crushed; but the Whigs came to Parliament eager for attack, while Perceval and Canning had exhausted their energies, and were thrown back on a wearisome defensive. The session--which lasted from January 21 to July 4--was remarkable chiefly for an obstinate struggle over the Orders in Council. Against Perceval’s commercial measures the Whigs bent the full strength of their party; and this strength, so far as intelligence was concerned, greatly outmatched that of the Ministry. New men made reputations in the conflict. In January, 1808, Alexander Baring--then about thirty-four years of age, not yet in Parliament, but second to no English merchant in standing--published a pamphlet, in reply to Stephen’s “War in Disguise;” and his superior knowledge and abilities gave, for the first time since 1776, solid ground of support to American influence in British politics. Side by side with Baring, a still younger man thrust himself into public notice by force of qualities which for half a century were to make him the object of mixed admiration and laughter. The new American champion, Henry Brougham, a native of Edinburgh, thirty years of age, like many other Scotch lawyers had come to seek and find at Westminster the great prize of his profession. Like Baring, Brougham was not yet in Parliament; but this obstacle--which would have seemed to most men final--could not prevent him from speaking his mind, even in presence of the House. Lord Grenville began the attack, and Canning the defence, on the first day of the session; but not until after January 27, when news of the embargo arrived, and all immediate danger of war vanished, did the situation become clear. February 5 the debate began. The Whigs found that Perceval met their assaults on the character and policy of his orders by quotations from Lord Howick’s Order, which the Whigs only twelve months before had issued and defended as an act of retaliation. Narrow as this personal rejoinder might be, it was fatal to the Whig argument. Baring and Brougham might criticise Spencer Perceval; but Lord Grenville and Lord Howick had enough to do in explaining their own words. The more vehement they became, the more obstinately their opponents persevered in holding them to this single point.