While Congress wrangled about systems of defence almost equally inefficient,--gunboats and frigates, militia and volunteers, muskets, movable batteries, and fixed fortifications,--the country listened with drawn breath for news from England. Time dragged on, but still the “Revenge” did not return. About the end of November, despatches[123] dated October 10 arrived from Monroe, announcing that Canning refused to couple the “Chesapeake” affair with the impressment of merchant seamen; that he was about to send a special envoy to Washington with the exclusive object of settling the “Chesapeake” affair; that Monroe had taken his final audience of King George, and that William Pinkney was henceforward sole minister of the United States in London. Of the treaty not a hope seemed to exist. Monroe’s return was ominous of failure. Erskine, uneasy at hearing these reports, hastened to the White House, and without delay reported Jefferson’s conversation to his Government:[124]-- “I found from my interview with the President that he was much disappointed at the result of the discussions which had taken place, and, as he expressed himself, greatly alarmed by some of the passages in your letters that a satisfactory redress of the injuries complained of was not likely to be afforded to the United States. He informed me that the reasons which had induced him to instruct the American ministers to endeavor to obtain some arrangement upon the point of impressment of British seamen out of American ships, at the same time that a reparation for the attack on the ‘Chesapeake’ by his Majesty’s ship ‘Leopard’ was demanded, were that he conceived that if a satisfactory security against the injuries arising to the United States from such impressments could have been obtained, a redress for the attack upon their national ship would have been much easier settled; but that if the point of honor was to be taken into consideration by itself, he foresaw greater difficulties in the way of an amicable adjustment of it.... The President further observed, however, that although he feared the separating the two subjects would increase the difficulty of the negotiation, and that he considered the determination of his Majesty’s government to postpone the consideration of the point of impressment--which he said was the most serious ground of difference--as an unfavorable symptom of their ultimate intentions upon that subject, yet that he certainly would not refuse upon the ground of form only that the affair of the ‘Chesapeake’ should be first concluded; but expressed a hope that the minister who should be sent to this country to settle that subject of complaint should also be invested by his Majesty with powers to negotiate upon the point of impressment.”