To the amazement of friend and foe Canning next attacked the license system as one of which he had little knowledge, but whose details required investigation. As for America, as he was the last man who would lay the honor of the country at her feet, so would he be among the first to go far in the work of honorable conciliation, and he would not oppose the motion before the House because it might have incidentally the effect of conciliating her. Finally, if the account of Plumer Ward be true, “he concluded the first dull and flat speech I ever heard him make, without the smallest support from the House, and sat down without a cheer and almost without its being known that he had finished.” Plumer Ward was a passionate admirer of Spencer Perceval, and his anger with Canning showed the soreness caused by Canning’s sudden change of front. Perceval was obliged to rescue Rose, but in doing so made the case worse rather than better as far as regarded America. Having declared that the orders were strictly retaliatory, he added, in the same breath, that “the object of Government was to protect and to force the trade of this country.... The object of the Orders in Council was not to destroy the trade of the Continent, but to force the Continent to trade with us.” Had this assertion been made by Madison or Brougham it would have been instantly contradicted; but Perceval’s silence was still less creditable than his avowals. No one knew so well as Perceval where to strike with effect at Canning; for not only could he show that from the first Canning was privy to the system of forcing commerce upon France, but he had preserved the letter in which Canning at the outset advised him to keep out of sight the exceptions which gave the measure the air of a commercial rather than a political transaction. Never had a distinguished man exposed himself with less caution than Canning, by declaring that in his opinion the orders required revision from the moment the British government should appear to intervene to relax their pressure upon the enemy; for during two years of his official life he had given steady though silent support to the Board of Trade in its persistent efforts to supply France, by means of licenses in thousands and smuggling without limit, with every product known to commerce. Such conduct challenged the severest retort, but Perceval made none. He would have been superior to the statesmen of his time had he felt the true nature of that sleight-of-hand which he and Canning practised, and which, like the trick of blacklegs on the race-course, consisted in shuffling together the two words, “Retaliation--Self-defence! Self-defence--Retaliation!” but he could at least understand the impossibility of exposing Canning without also exposing himself.