Macon’s bill came back to the House as a law for the exclusion of British and French war-vessels from American harbors. The House resented the treatment, and after another long debate, March 5, refused to concur in the Senate’s amendments. By a vote of sixty-seven to forty-seven the bill was sent back to the Senate in its original form. A long wrangle ensued; a committee of conference failed to agree, and March 16 the Senate was obliged to decide whether it would yield to the House, or allow the bill to fail. On that question Samuel Smith made a speech,[145] which he afterward printed, and which demanded attention because it forced President Madison into a course that exposed him to severe and perhaps deserved criticism. The Senate was equally balanced. Samuel Smith’s voice and vote decided the result. His reasons were such as no one could misunderstand. “I found in it,” said he, criticising Macon’s bill, “or believed I did, that which would be ruinous to the commerce of the United States, and therefore felt myself bound by the duty I owe to my constituents to remove the veil and leave the measure open to public view.... Is there no danger, Mr. President, to be apprehended from the Emperor if the bill should pass with this provision [that any British or French ship hereafter arriving in an American harbor should with its cargo be seized and condemned]? His character for decision is well known. Might we not fear that he would retort our own measure upon us by causing all the property of our merchants now under sequestration (amounting to at least three millions of dollars) to be condemned?... But what will England do should this law pass? Will the King and Council retaliate our measure? I confess, Mr. President, that I think they will.... What will be the consequence? Ruin to your merchants and destruction to the party which now governs this country.... But I have been told that if England should retaliate, her retaliation would operate as a complete non-intercourse between the two countries, and in a way that would be effectual; and that as I had always approved those measures, this view of the subject must meet my approbation,--that it would precisely create that which I have said was a powerful measure against Great Britain: to wit, an embargo. I never will agree, Mr. President, in this side-way to carry into execution a great national measure.”