House then hurried the bill through all its stages, and at nine o’clock passed it by a vote of seventy to forty-one. The majority numbered less than half the members. In 1807 the House imposed the embargo by a vote of eighty-two to forty-four, yet the country failed to support it. The experience of 1807 boded ill for that of 1812. In the Senate the outlook was worse. The motion to extend the embargo from sixty to ninety days was adopted without opposition, changing the character of the bill at a single stroke from a strong war measure into a weak measure of negotiation; but even in this weaker form it received only twenty votes against thirteen in opposition. The President could not depend on a bare majority in the Senate. The New England Democrats shrank from the embargo even more than from war. Giles and Samuel Smith stood in open opposition. The Clintons had become candidates of every discontented faction in the country. Had the vote in the Senate been counted by States, only six would have been thrown for the embargo, and of these only Pennsylvania from the North. In face of such distraction, war with England seemed worse than a gambler’s risk. Madison, watching with that apparent neutrality which irritated both his friends and his enemies, reported to Jefferson the progress of events.[160] He was not pleased with the Senate’s treatment of his recommendations, or with “that invariable opposition, open with some and covert with others, which has perplexed and impeded the whole course of our public measures.” He explained the motives of senators in extending the embargo from sixty to ninety days. Some wished to make it a peace measure, some to postpone war, some to allow time for the return of their constituents’ ships; some intended it as a ruse against the enemy. For his own part he had regarded a short embargo as a rational and provident measure, which would be relished by the greater part of the nation; but he looked upon it as a step to immediate war, and he waited only for the Senate to make the declaration.