If this was Canning’s true state of mind, his instructions to Erskine less than a month before, offering to abandon the Orders in Council, seemed to admit no defence. Still less could be explained how President Madison, after reading these speeches, should have expected from Canning the approval of any possible arrangement. Yet the irritation of Canning’s tone showed him to be ill at ease,--he felt the ground slipping under his feet. The public had become weary of him and his colleagues. The commercial system they had invented seemed to create the evils it was made to counteract. The press began to complain. As early as January 13 the “Times” showed signs of deserting the orders, which it declared to be no “acts of retaliation,” but “measures of counteraction,” complicated by transit duties doubtful either in expediency or justice. “If America will withdraw her Embargo and Non-importation Acts as far as they relate to England, provided we rescind the Orders in Council, we cannot consider this as a disgraceful concession on our part.” After the debate of March 6, the “Times” renewed its complaints. Every day increased the difficulties of ministers, until mere change became relief. At length, April 26, the reality of the weakness of Perceval and Canning became clear. On that day a new Order in Council[54] appeared, which roused great interest because it seemed to abandon the whole ground taken in the Orders of November, 1807, and to return within the admitted principles of international law. The machinery of the old orders was apparently discarded; the machinery of blockade was restored in its place. The Order of April 26, 1809, declared that the old orders were revoked and annulled except so far as their objects were to be attained by a general blockade of all ports and places under the government of France. The blockade thus declared was to extend northward as far as Ems, and was to include on the south the ports of northern Italy. Of course the new blockade was not even claimed to be effective. No squadrons were to enforce its provisions by their actual presence before the blockaded ports. In that respect the Order of April 26, 1809, was as illegal as that of Nov. 11, 1807; but the new arrangement opened to neutral commerce all ports not actually ports of France, even though the British flag should be excluded from them,--retaliating upon France only the injury which the French decrees attempted to inflict on England.