During this interval the movement against the Orders in Council gained strength. In the Commons, February 13, another debate occurred when Whitbread, in a strong American speech, moved for the diplomatic correspondence with the United States, and was answered with some temper by Stephen and Perceval. Stephen went so far as to declare,--and whatever he declared he certainly believed,--that “nothing but the utmost aversion to a quarrel with America would have enabled this country to have borne so much. So far from having done anything to provoke a rupture with America, the strongest, most persevering, and almost even humiliating means had been employed to avoid it;”[215] but he would not surrender to her the carrying and coasting trade of Europe even to prevent a war. Perceval spoke more evasively than usual, defending his commercial system as one that had been begun by his Whig predecessors, and throwing the blame for its irregularities on Napoleon’s decrees; but although that day he was supposed to be in extreme peril of losing his majority, he closed his speech by declaring that sooner than yield to the repeal of the Orders in Council he would refuse share in any Administration. Alexander Baring answered that in this case war could hardly be avoided, and made an earnest appeal, founded on the distress of the manufacturing towns, in favor of the direct interference of Parliament to overrule the minister. Even William Wilberforce, whose speeches sometimes recalled those of Polonius, and whose hesitations generally marked the decline rather than the rise of a Ministry in power, felt himself constrained to say that “there was not at all times a sufficient attention in this country to the spirit of conciliation toward other countries, and particularly toward America. It would be well if persons in high situations in government had been more abundant in their civilities to that nation.”