There was need for this embodiment of troops. Already, dating from the 3rd of April, the American Congress had passed an Act laying an embargo for ninety days on all vessels within the jurisdiction of the United States. The President, Mr. Jefferson, had recommended the embargo. He had long intended to gratify the lower appetites of the worst class of the American people, who were now more numerous than that respectable class of republicans of which that great man, Washington, was himself the type. The measure was preparatory to a war with Great Britain. And war was very soon afterwards declared. On the 4th of June, a bill declaring that war existed between Great Britain and the United States passed the House of Representatives by a majority of seventy-nine to forty-nine. The bill was taken to the Senate, and there it passed only by the narrow majority of six. The vote was nineteen voices in the affirmative and thirteen in the negative. Mr. Jefferson assented to the bill on the 18th of June. The grounds of war were set forth in a message of the President to Congress, on the 1st of June. The impressment of American seamen by British naval officers; the blockade of the ports of the enemies of Great Britain, supported by no adequate force, in consequence of which American commerce had been plundered in every sea, and the great staples of the country cut off from their legitimate markets; and on account of the British Orders in Council. The Committee on Foreign relations believed that the freeborn sons of America were worthy to enjoy the liberty which their fathers had purchased at the price of much blood and treasure. They saw by the measures adopted by Great Britain, a course commenced and persisted in, which might lead to a loss of national character and independence, and they felt no hesitation in advising resistance by force, in which the Americans of that day would prove to the enemy and the world, that they had not only inherited that liberty which their fathers had given them, but had also the will and the power to maintain it. They relied on the patriotism of the nation, and confidently trusted that the Lord of Hosts would go down with the United States to battle, in a righteous cause, and crown American efforts with success. The committee recommended an immediate appeal to arms. The confidential secretary of Sir James Craig was not a little to blame for the terrible state of fermentation into which the representatives of the sovereign people of America had wrought themselves. Without the knowledge of the Imperial government, Mr. Secretary Ryland had received the concurrence of Sir James Craig to a scheme for the annexation of the New England States to Canada. A young man named Henry, of Irish parentage, and a captain in the militia of the American States had come to Montreal with the view of remaining in Canada. He studied law and made considerable proficiency. Indeed, he was a young man possessed of some talent and of great assurance.