The Resolutions proposed by the Committee on Foreign Relations were adopted, December 16, by what was in effect a unanimous vote. Only twenty-two members recorded their names against the increase of the regular army, and only fifteen voted against fitting out the navy. A still stronger proof of political revolution was the vote of ninety-seven to twenty-two in favor of the Resolution which authorized merchant vessels to arm. This measure had the effect of a declaration of war. In former years it had been always rejected as improper, because it created a private war, taking from the Government and giving to private citizens the control over war and peace; but December 19 the House adopted this last and decisive measure, and while many Republicans would not vote at all, and even Lowndes and Macon voted against it, Josiah Quincy, Timothy Pitkin, and most of the extreme Federalists recorded their votes in its favor. Meanwhile the Senate had acted. In the want of reports, no record remains of what passed in debate before December 17; but the Journal shows that William B. Giles was made chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations, with Crawford and five other senators as his associates; and that Giles reported December 9 a bill for raising, not ten thousand regular troops, as the President recommended, but ten regiments of infantry, two of artillery, and one of cavalry,--in all twenty-five thousand men for five years, in addition to an existing army nominally ten thousand strong. Each regiment was to number two thousand men, and whether its ranks were filled or not, required a full complement of officers. Rumor reported, and Giles admitted, that his bill was not an Administration measure, but on the contrary annoyed the Administration, which had asked for all the regular force it could raise or organize within a year. The public, though unwilling to side with Giles against the President, could not but admit that the conquest of Canada by ten thousand men was uncertain, even with the assistance of volunteers and militia, while the entire scheme of war would become a subject of ridicule if Congress avowed the intention of vanquishing all the forces of Great Britain with only ten thousand raw troops.