The debate ended in a division. One hundred and forty-four members, including Canning and Wilberforce, went into the lobby with Brougham. Only a majority of seventy-two remained to be overcome; and to Brougham’s energetic nature such a majority offered an incentive to exertion. Perceval’s friends, on the other hand, exulted because this majority of seventy-two stood by him against the combined forces of Wellesley, Canning, the Radicals, and the Whigs.[220] Except for one danger, Perceval and his system were still secure; but the fear that the Americans meant at last to fight gave him no rest,--it dogged his steps, and galled him at every motion. Neither Rose nor James Stephen could prove, by any statistics under the control of the Board of Trade, that their system would benefit British commerce if it produced an American war. Already the north and west of England, the inland counties, the seaports, had risen in insurrection against the orders. Stephen and Rose exhausted themselves and the House to prove that the balance of profit was still in England’s favor; but what would become of their balance-sheet if they were obliged to add the cost of an American war to the debtor side of their account? In the effort to strengthen his Ministry Perceval persuaded Lord Sidmouth to enter the Cabinet, but only on condition that the orders should be left an open question. Sidmouth plainly said that he would rather give up the orders than face an American war.[221] He also asked that the license system should be renounced. Perceval replied that this would be a greater sacrifice than if the licenses had never been granted.[222] Lord Sidmouth was not a great man,--Canning despised his abilities, and the Prince of Wales called him a blockhead;[223] but he was, except Lord Castlereagh, the only ally to be found, and Perceval accepted him on his own terms. The new Cabinet at once took the American question in hand, and Castlereagh then wrote his instructions of April 10 to Foster, making use of Bassano’s report to justify England’s persistence in the orders; but besides this despatch Castlereagh wrote another of the same date, in which Sidmouth’s idea took shape. If the United States would restore intercourse with Great Britain, the British government would issue no more licenses and would resort to rigorous blockades.[224] This great concession showed how rapidly Perceval lost ground; but this was not yet all. April 21 the Prince Regent issued his formal declaration that whenever the French government should publish an authentic Act expressly and unconditionally repealing the Berlin and Milan Decrees, the Orders in Council, including that of Jan. 7, 1807, should be wholly and absolutely revoked.