When Congress adjourned, May 2, 1810, the result attained during five months passed in continuous labor amounted to little more than the constitutional necessities of government,--the appropriation bills; a loan for five million dollars; an Act for taking a census of persons; an Act appropriating sixty thousand dollars toward making the Cumberland Road; an appropriation of five thousand dollars for experiments on Fulton’s torpedoes; in regard to foreign affairs, Giles’s Resolution blaming the conduct of the British minister, and Macon’s or Taylor’s Act, which condoned that conduct. The old Non-intercourse Act of March 1, 1809, expired by limitation with the expiring Congress May 1, 1810. “We adjourned last night,” wrote Randolph to Nicholson the next day,[153] “a little after twelve, having terminated a session of more than five months by authorizing a loan of as many millions, and--all is told. The incapacity of Government has long ceased to be a laughing matter. The Cabinet is all to pieces, and the two Houses have tumbled about their own ears.” With all Randolph’s faults, he had more of the qualities, training, and insight of a statesman than were to be found elsewhere among the representatives in the Eleventh Congress; and although himself largely the cause of the chaos he described, he felt its disgraces and dangers. Society in general troubled itself little about them. The commercial class, pleased to be freed from restraints, and the agricultural class, consoled by the fair prices of their produce, thought as little as possible about their failure in government; what was called good society for the most part drew a bitter pleasure from it. Yet beneath the general physical contentment almost equally general moral disgust existed and made itself felt. President Madison, who was in the best position to gauge popular opinion, began to suspect the hardly perceptible movement of a coming tide. After the adjournment he wrote to William Pinkney at London:[154]-- “Among the inducements to the experiment of an unrestricted commerce now made were two which contributed essentially to the majority of votes in its favor,--first, a general hope, favored by daily accounts from England, that an adjustment of differences there, and thence in France, would render the measure safe and proper; second, a willingness in not a few to teach the advocates for an open trade the folly as well as degradation of their policy.... It will not be wonderful, therefore, if the passive spirit which marked the late session of Congress should at the next meeting be roused to the opposite point, more especially as the tone of the nation has never been so low as that of its representatives.” Madison still held to his favorite doctrine, and meant no more by his warning than that the Eleventh Congress might be expected to reimpose measures of commercial restriction:--