Annoyed by this insuperable obstacle to an arrangement, Monroe offered the British government to prohibit by Act of Congress the employment of British seamen in the public or private marine of the United States.[382] The offer was meant as an inducement for England to sacrifice her seamen already naturalized in America, on the chance of recovering those who might not carry American papers; but it bore to England the look of an evasion, and was received by Lord Castlereagh in that sense.[383] The subject had reached this stage when it was brought before Congress by the President’s Annual Message, and was referred by the House to the Committee of Foreign Relations. January 29 Felix Grundy made a report from the committee,[384] doubtless written in concert with Monroe and intended to support his position, since it approved what the secretary had done and gave authority to his views. The report asserted with emphasis that impressment alone prevented an armistice. More than once, as though this were the weak point of the government’s situation, Grundy returned to the theme that impressment “must be provided for in the negotiation; the omission of it in a treaty of peace would not leave it on its former grounds,--it would in effect be an absolute relinquishment.” The danger of thus committing the government to a _sine qua non_ which might need to be abandoned was becoming more evident every day, for already Napoleon was known to have suffered some great disaster in Russia, and his power in Spain was evidently threatened with overthrow. After Napoleon should have been routed in Russia and Spain, and the American armies should have abandoned the hope of conquering Canada, the chance of driving England into an express surrender of impressments would vanish. Wisdom dictated caution; but Monroe’s letters and Grundy’s report, while committing the government to a _sine qua non_ preliminary to negotiation, proposed to escape the inevitable difficulty by an expedient less dignified than the country had a right to expect. Grundy reported a bill to serve as the groundwork for peace. This bill began by a prospective, reciprocal prohibition, “from and after the termination of a treaty of peace,” to employ on any vessel, public or private, any but actual citizens, “or persons who being resident within the United States at the time of such treaty, and having previously declared agreeably to existing laws their intention to become citizens of the United States, shall be admitted as such within five years thereafter in the manner prescribed by law.” With these exceptions, Congress was to dismiss all foreign seamen from the American service, and to forbid forever the sea as a livelihood to persons coming into the country with the intention of acquiring citizenship, after the treaty of peace.