No course would have pleased Congress so much as to do nothing at all; but this wish could not be fully gratified. The Non-intercourse Act of March 1, 1809, was to expire by limitation with the actual session. As early as December 1 the House referred the matter to a committee with Macon for its head. Macon probably went to the Treasury for instructions. A plan drawn by Gallatin, and accepted without opposition by the Cabinet, was reported December 19 to the House in the form of a bill which had less the character of a Non-intercourse than of a Navigation Act; for while it closed American ports to every British or French vessel public and private, it admitted British and French merchandise when imported directly from their place of origin in vessels wholly American. The measure was as mild a protest as human skill could devise if compared with the outrages it retaliated, but it had the merit of striking at the British shipping interest which was chiefly to blame for the conduct of the British government. Under the provisions of the bill, American shipping would gain a monopoly of American trade. Not a British vessel of any kind could enter an American port. Macon’s bill came before the House Jan. 8, 1810, for discussion, which lasted three weeks. The opposition objected to the new policy for the double reason that it was too strong and too weak. St. Loe Livermore, a Massachusetts Federalist, began by treating the measure as so extreme that England and France would resent it by shutting their ports to all American ships; while Sawyer of North Carolina denounced it as evaporating the national spirit in mere commercial regulations, when no measure short of war would meet the evil. According as commerce or passion weighed with the reasoners, the bill was too violent or disgracefully feeble. Throughout the winter, these contradictory arguments were pressed in alternation by speaker after speaker. Macon reflected only the views of Madison and Gallatin when he replied that if England and France should retaliate by excluding American shipping from their ports, they would do what America wanted; for they must then enforce the non-intercourse which the United States had found impossible to enforce without their aid. He agreed with the war-members that the bill showed none too much energy, but he argued that the nation was less prepared for war than in 1808 and 1809; while as for Jackson’s quarrels, he declined to admit that they changed the affair one iota.