So little cordiality was felt for President Madison by his party that only the want of a strong rival reconciled a majority to the choice; but although Clay, Crawford, and Calhoun accepted the necessity, the State of New York flatly rebelled. At Albany, when the news arrived that the Washington caucus had named Madison for the Presidency, the Republican members of the State legislature called for May 29 a caucus of their own. Their whole number was ninety-five; of these, all but four attended, and eighty-seven voted that it was expedient to name a candidate for the Presidency. Ninety members then voted to support DeWitt Clinton against Madison, and Clinton formally accepted the nomination. This unusual unanimity among the New York Republicans raised the movement somewhat above the level of ordinary New York politics, and pointed to a growing jealousy of Virginia, which threatened to end in revival of the old alliance between New York and New England. Even in quiet times this prospect would have been alarming; in face of war, it threatened to be fatal. During the entire month of May Congress passed, with only one exception, no Act for war purposes. While the absent members attended to their private affairs, Government waited for the last despatches from abroad. The sloop-of-war “Hornet,” after long delay, arrived at New York, May 19, and three days afterward the despatches reached Washington. Once more, but for the last time, the town roused itself to learn what hope of peace they contained. As far as concerned Great Britain, the news would at any previous time have checked hostile action, for it showed that the British government had taken alarm, and that for the first time a real change of policy was possible; but this news came from unofficial sources, and could not be laid before Congress. Officially, the British government still stoutly maintained that it could not yield. Lord Wellesley had given place to Lord Castlereagh. In a very long despatch,[168] dated April 10, the new Foreign Minister pleaded earnestly that England could not submit herself to the mercy of France. The argument of Lord Castlereagh rested on an official report made by the Duc de Bassano to the Emperor, March 10, in which Napoleon reasserted his rules regarding neutrals in language quite as strong as that of his decrees, and reasserted the validity of those decrees, without exception, in regard to every neutral that did not recognize their provisions. Certainly, no proof could be imagined competent to show the continued existence of the decrees if Bassano’s report failed to do so; and Castlereagh, with some reason, relied on this evidence to convince not so much the American government as the American people that a deception had been practised, and that England could not act as America required without submitting to Napoleon’s principles as well as to his arms.