Although Madison pointed to the notorious supply of food for the British forces in Canada as one of the motives for imposing an embargo, no one supposed that motive to be decisive. Other laws already forbade and punished such communication with the enemy; and experience proved that a general embargo would be no more effective than any special prohibition. The idea that England could be distressed by an embargo seemed still less likely to influence Government. Congress knew that Russia, Prussia, Denmark, Sweden and Norway, Spain, and South America were already open to English commerce, and that a few days must decide whether Napoleon could much longer prevent Great Britain from trading with France. The possibility of distressing England by closing Boston and Salem, New Bedford and Newport to neutral ships was not to be seriously treated. Whatever was the true motive of the President’s recommendation, Congress instantly approved it. The next day, December 10, the House went into secret session, and after two days of debate passed an Embargo Act by a vote of eighty-five to fifty-seven, which quickly passed the Senate by a vote of twenty to fourteen, and received the President’s approval December 17, being the first legislation adopted at the second session of the Thirteenth Congress.[467] The Act was at once enforced with so much severity that within a month Congress was obliged to consider and quickly adopted another Act[468] relieving from its operation the people of Nantucket, who were in a state of starvation, all communication with the main land having been forbidden by the law; but nothing proved that the illicit communication with Canada ceased.