Admission of weakness in the national sensibility gave the key-note of the report, and of the speeches that supported it. Even the allusion to the repeal of the French Decrees showed fear lest the truth might make the public mind callous to shame:-- “France at length ... announced the repeal ... of the Decrees of Berlin and Milan; and it affords a subject of sincere congratulation to be informed, through the official organs of the Government, that those decrees are, so far at least as our rights are concerned, really and practically at an end.” Porter had not studied the correspondence of the Department of State so thoroughly as to learn that Russia and Sweden were in the act of making war to protect American rights from the operation of those decrees which, as he was informed, were “really and practically at an end.” His report ignored these difficulties, but added that England affected to deny the practical extinction of the French Decrees. In truth, England not affectedly but positively denied the extinction of those decrees; the United States offered no sufficient evidence to satisfy even themselves; and a declaration of war founded on England’s “affected” denial was in a high degree likely to deaden the national sensibility. With more reason and effect, the committee dwelt on the severity with which England enforced her blockades as far as the American coast; and last of all, added, almost in a tone of apology, an allusion to the practice of impressments:-- “Your committee are not, however, of that sect whose worship is at the shrine of a calculating avarice; and while we are laying before you the just complaints of our merchants against the plunder of their ships and cargoes, we cannot refrain from presenting to the justice and humanity of our country the unhappy case of our impressed seamen. Although the groans of these victims of barbarity for the loss of (what should be dearer to Americans than life) their liberty; although the cries of their wives and children, in the privation of protectors and parents, have of late been drowned in the louder clamors at the loss of property,--yet is the practice of forcing our mariners into the British navy, in violation of the rights of our flag, carried on with unabated rigor and severity. If it be our duty to encourage the fair and legitimate commerce of this country by protecting the property of the merchant, then indeed, by as much as life and liberty are more estimable than ships and goods, so much more impressive is the duty to shield the persons of our seamen, whose hard and honest services are employed equally with those of the merchants in advancing under the mantle of its laws the interests of their country.”