The effect was immediately to strengthen the administration, Dayton, the speaker, passing to the ranks of the Federalists.
On the 18th the Senate sent down a bill authorizing the President to procure sixteen armed vessels to act as convoys.

Gallatin still held firm.

He admitted that from the beginning of the European contest the belligerent powers had disregarded the law of nations and the stipulations of treaties, but he still opposed the granting of armed convoys, which would lead to a collision.

Let us not, he said, act on speculative grounds; if our present situation is better than war, let us keep it.

Better even, he said, suffer the French to go on with their depredations than to take any step which may lead to war.
Allen of Connecticut read a passage from the dispatches which envenomed the debate.