Castlereagh did not abandon the hope of peace until Jonathan Russell, August 24, reported to him the concessions which the President required antecedent to negotiation, the stoppage of impressments, dismissal of impressed seamen, indemnity for spoliations, and abandonment of paper blockades. The British secretary intimated that he thought these demands, as conditions precedent to an armistice, somewhat insulting;[2] and in conversation he explained to Russell that such concessions would merely cost the Ministry their places without result. “You are not aware,” he said,[3] “of the great sensibility and jealousy of the people of England on this subject; and no administration could expect to remain in power that should consent to renounce the right of impressment or to suspend the practice, without certainty of an arrangement which should obviously be calculated to secure its object.” Russell then proposed an informal understanding,--adding of his own accord, without authority from his Government, a proposal, afterward adopted by Congress, that the United States should naturalize no more British seamen. Castlereagh made the obvious reply that an informal understanding offered no more guaranty to England than a formal one; that it had the additional disadvantage of bearing on its face a character of disguise; that in any case the discussion of guaranties must precede the understanding; and that Russell had on this subject neither authority nor instructions.[4] The correspondence closed September 19, and Russell left England; but not until October 13, after learning that the President had refused to ratify the armistice made by Prevost with Dearborn, did the British government order general reprisals,--and even this order closed with a proviso that nothing therein contained should affect the previous authority given to Admiral Sir John Borlase Warren to arrange a cessation of hostilities.