The hope vanished when Erskine’s instructions became known, and was succeeded by consternation when the public read the reports made by Erskine and Canning of the language used by Madison, Gallatin, and Pinkney. For the first time in this contest, Englishmen and Americans could no longer understand each other’s meaning. Erskine had so confused every detail with his own ideas, and Canning’s course on one side the Atlantic seemed so little to accord with his tactics on the other, that neither party could longer believe in the other’s good faith. Americans were convinced that Canning had offered terms which he intended them to refuse. Englishmen were sure that Madison had precipitated a settlement which he knew could not be carried out. Madison credited Canning with fraud as freely as Canning charged Madison with connivance. “I find myself under the mortifying necessity of setting out to-morrow morning for Washington,” wrote Madison to Jefferson, August 3.[86] “The intricate state of our affairs with England produced by the mixture of fraud and folly in her late conduct, and the important questions to be decided as to the legal effect of the failure of the arrangement of April on our commercial relations with her are thought by the heads of departments to require that I should join them.... You will see by the instructions to Erskine, as published by Canning, that the latter was as much determined that there should be no adjustment as the former was that there should be one.” The President remained three days in Washington in order to sign, August 9, a Proclamation reviving the Non-intercourse Act against Great Britain. On the same day the Secretary of the Treasury enclosed this Proclamation to the Collectors of Customs in a circular, with instructions not to enforce the penalties of the law against vessels entering American ports on the faith of Erskine’s arrangement. This done, Madison returned to Montpelier, August 10, leaving Erskine to exchange apologetic but very unsatisfactory explanations with Robert Smith and Gallatin.