“Remember where we were two days ago. You know what warlike measures have been taken for three months past; adopted slowly, they have been progressively followed up. We have made use of Henry’s documents as a last means of exciting (_pour achever d’exalter_) the nation and Congress; you have seen by all the use we have made of them whither we were aiming; within a week we were going to propose the embargo, and the declaration of war was the immediate consequence of it. A ship has arrived from London, bringing us despatches to February 5, which contain nothing offering a hope of repeal of the orders; this was all that was needed to carry the declaration of war, which would have passed almost unanimously. It is at such a moment that your frigates come and burn our ships, destroy all our work, and put the Administration in the falsest and most terrible position in which a government can find itself placed.” For the hundredth time Monroe repeated the old story that the repeal of the French Decrees was the foundation of the whole American system; “that should the Executive now propose the embargo or the declaration of war, the whole Federal party--reinforced by the Clinton party, the Smith party, and the discontented Republicans--would rise in mass and demand why we persist in making war on England for maintaining her Orders in Council when we have proofs so recent and terrible that the French Decrees are not withdrawn.” He added that if the question were put at such a moment, he did not doubt that the Government would lose its majority. Foster also attempted to interfere in this complicated quarrel:-- “I took an occasion to wait on Mr. Monroe,” wrote Foster April 1, “to hear what he would say relative to this outrage. He seemed much struck with the enormity of it, and ... admitted that there were some circumstances in this particular instance of peculiar violence, and calling for the highest expressions of resentment on the part of this government. He told me that M. Serurier in an interview he had with him on the subject stated his disbelief in the fact.” Foster wrote an official note to Monroe, using the recent French outrages as new ground for demanding to see the instrument by which the decrees were said to be repealed.