old excesses, England and France at that day having such a
monopoly of the ocean as to render them somewhat independent of most of
the old-fashioned notions of the rights of neutrals. As for America, she
was cursed with the cant of economy--an evil that is apt to produce as
many bad consequences as the opposite vice, extravagance. The money paid
as _interest_ on the sums expended in the war of 1812, might have
maintained a navy that would have caused both belligerents to respect her
rights, and thereby saved the principal entirely, to say nothing of all
the other immense losses dependent on an interrupted trade; but demagogues
were at work with their raven throats, and it is not reasonable to expect
that the masses can draw very just distinctions on the subject of remote
interests, when present expenditure is the question immediately before
them. It is true, I remember a modern French logician, who laid down the
dogma that the tendency of democracies being to excesses, if you give a
people the power, they would tax themselves to death; but, however true
this theory may be in the main, it certainly is not true _quoad_ the good
citizens of the great model republic. It was bad enough to be accursed
with a spurious economy; but this was not the heaviest grievance that then
weighed upon the national interests. The demon of faction, party spirit,
was actively at work in the country; and it was almost as rare to find a
citizen who was influenced purely by patriotic and just views, as it would
be to find an honest man in the galleys. The nation, as a rule, was either
English or French. Some swore by the First Consul, and some by Billy Pitt.
As for the commercial towns, taken in connection with the upper classes,
these were little more than so many reflections of English feeling,
exaggerated and rendered still more factitious, by distance. Those who did
not swallow all that the English tories chose to pour down their throats,
took the _pillules Napoleons_ without gagging. If there were exceptions,
they were very few, and principally among travelled men--pilgrims who, by
approaching the respective idols, had discovered they were made by
human hands!

Impressment at sea, and out of neutral vessels, was revived, as a matter
of course, with the renewal of the war and all American ships felt the
expediency, of avoiding cruisers that might deprive them of their men.
Strange as it may seem, a large and leading class of Americans justifie