Matters stood thus till March 21, 1812, when Washington was excited by news that Foster had received recent instructions from his Government, and the crisis of war and peace was at hand. “The anxiety and curiosity of both Houses of Congress,” reported Foster, April 1,[145] “to know the real nature of the despatches was so great that some of the members on committees told me they could not get the common routine of business at all attended to. The Department of State was crowded with individuals endeavoring to obtain information from Mr. Monroe, while I was questioned by all those with whom I happened to be acquainted.” A report spread through Washington that the Orders in Council were repealed, and that an immediate accommodation of all differences between England and the United States might be expected. Foster would have been glad to find his new instructions composed in such a sense; but he hardly expected to find them so positive as they were in an opposite spirit. Lord Wellesley’s despatch of Jan. 28, 1812,[146] which may be said to have decided the declaration of war, was afterward published, and need not be quoted in detail. He remonstrated against the arming of merchant vessels, and ordered Foster to speak earnestly on the subject “for the purpose of preventing a state of affairs which might probably lead to acts of force.” The pretended revocation of the French Decrees, said Lord Wellesley, was in fact a fresh enactment of them, while the measures of America tended to occasion such acts of violence as might “produce the calamity of war between the two countries.” This usual formula, by which diplomacy announced an expected rupture, was reinforced by secret instructions warning Foster cautiously to “avoid employing any suggestions of compromise to the American government which might induce them to doubt the sincerity or firmness of his Majesty’s government in their determination, already announced, of maintaining steadfastly the system of defence adopted by them until the enemy shall relinquish his unwarrantable mode of attack upon our interests through the violation of neutral rights.” Foster regarded this order as a rebuke, for he had talked freely, both to his own Government and in Washington, of the possibility that the Orders in Council might be withdrawn. The warning gave him a manner more formal than usual when he went, March 21, to assure Monroe that the Prince Regent would never give way. Monroe listened with great attention; “then merely said, with however considerable mildness of tone, that he had hoped his conversations with me at the early part of the session would have produced a different result.” Foster left him without further discussion, and announced everywhere in public that, “far from being awed and alarmed at the threatening attitude and language” of Congress, his Government would maintain its system unimpaired.[147]