Another observer wrote comments, serious in a different sense. Erskine watched with extreme interest every detail of this complicated struggle, and reported to Canning both facts and speculations which could not fail to affect the British government. Aware that Canning had won a brilliant success, Erskine labored to profit by his triumph, and to turn it in the interests of peace. A vast majority of Americans, he said,[374] wanted only some plausible excuse to justify them in resenting Napoleon’s conduct; but “they naturally wish to be saved the complete humiliation of being obliged avowedly to recant all their violent declarations of their determination never to submit to the Orders in Council of Great Britain.” He speculated “how far it might be possible still further to bend the spirit of that part of the people of the United States until they should be forced to single out France to be resisted as the original aggressors while his Majesty’s Orders in Council continued to be enforced.” After the repeal of the embargo and the refusal to make war, but one remnant of American protest against British aggressions remained. The Republican caucus, February 7, decided in favor of returning to Jefferson’s pacific non-intercourse,--the system which had been, by common consent, thrown aside as insufficient even before the embargo. February 10 Erskine gave an account of the new measure, and of its probable effect on American politics:-- “It is true that a non-intercourse law may be considered by the Eastern States very objectionable; but as it would be rather a nominal prohibition than a rigorous enforcement, a resistance to it would be less likely to be made, and of less importance if it should take place. The ultimate consequences of such differences and jealousies arising between the Southern and Eastern States would inevitably tend to a dissolution of the Union, which has been for some time talked of, and has of late, as I have heard, been seriously contemplated by many of the leading people in the Eastern division.” The Non-intercourse Bill, which Erskine described February 10 as likely to be no more than a nominal prohibition of commerce, was reported February 11 to the House from the Committee of Foreign Relations The bill excluded all public and private vessels of France and England from American waters; forbade under severe penalties the importation of British or French goods; repealed the embargo laws, “except so far as they relate to Great Britain or France or their colonies or dependencies, or places in the actual possession of either;” and gave the President authority to reopen by proclamation the trade with France or England in case either of these countries should cease to violate neutral rights. That the proposed non-intercourse was in truth submission to the Orders in Council, no one denied.