Pinkney’s dealings with Canning were equally fruitless. January 26, when Pinkney received official news of the embargo, he went instantly to Canning, “who received my explanations with great apparent satisfaction, and took occasion to express the most-friendly disposition toward our country.”[267] Pinkney used this opportunity to remonstrate against the tax imposed on American cotton by the Orders in Council. A week afterward Canning sent for him, and gravely suggested a friendly arrangement. He wished to know Pinkney’s private opinion whether the United States would prefer an absolute interdict to a prohibitory duty on cotton intended for the continent.[268] The sting of this inquiry rested not so much in the alternative thus presented as in the seriousness with which Canning insisted that his overture was a concession to America. With all his wit, as Lord Castlereagh soon had reason to learn, Canning could not quite acquire tact or understand the insults he offered. Pinkney tried, with much good temper, to make him aware that his offer was in bad taste; but nothing could stop him in the path of conciliation, and February 22 he addressed to Pinkney a note announcing that the British government meant to prohibit the export of American cotton to the continent of Europe. “I flatter myself,” he continued,[269] “that this alteration in the legislative regulations by which the Orders of Council are intended to be carried into execution, will be considered by you as a satisfactory evidence of the disposition of his Majesty’s government to consult the feelings as well as the interests of the United States in any manner which may not impair the effect of that measure of commercial restriction to which the necessity of repelling the injustice of his enemies has compelled his Majesty reluctantly to have recourse.” “One object of all this is certainly to conciliate us,” wrote Pinkney to Madison.[270] On the day of Canning’s note Spencer Perceval carried out the promise by moving the House for leave to bring in a bill prohibiting the export of cotton, except by license. At the same time he extended the like prohibition to Jesuit’s bark, or quinine. Impervious to indignation and ridicule,--caring as little for the laughter of Sydney Smith as for the wrath of Lord Grenville,--Perceval pushed all his measures through Parliament, and by the middle of April succeeded in riveting his restrictive system on the statute-book. No power short of a new political revolution could thenceforward shake his grasp on American commerce.