As the year passed, and England’s triumph in Europe seemed to overshadow the world, the “Times,” probably recognizing the uselessness of attacking the Ministry, showed worse temper toward the United States. The Americans were rarely mentioned, and always with language of increasing ill humor. “Despicable in the cabinet, ridiculous in the field,”[461] the Americans disappeared from sight in the splendor of victory at Vittoria and Leipzig. No wish for peace was suggested, and if the “Times” expressed the true feelings of the respectable middle class, as it was supposed to aim at doing, no wish for peace could be supposed to exist.
Of the ministerial papers the “Courier” was the best, and of course was emphatic in support of the American war. The Ministry were known to be lukewarm about the United States, and for that reason they thought themselves obliged to talk in public as strongly as the strongest against a peace. When the Russian mediation called for notice, May 13, the “Courier” at once declared against it:—
“Before the war commenced, concession might have been proper; we always thought it unwise. But the hour of concession and compromise is passed. America has rushed unnecessarily and unnaturally into war, and she must be made to feel the effects of her folly and injustice; peace must be the consequence of punishment, and retraction of her insolent demands must precede negotiation. The thunders of our cannon must first strike terror into the American shores.”
The “Courier” felt that Americans were not Englishmen, and could not forgive it, but was unable to admit that they might still exercise a considerable influence on human affairs:—
“They have added nothing to literature, nothing to any of the sciences; they have not produced one good poet, not one celebrated historian! Their statesmen are of a mixed breed,—half metaphysicians, half politicians; all the coldness of the one with all the cunning of the other. Hence we never see anything enlarged in their conceptions or grand in their measures.”[462]
These reasons were hardly sufficient to prove the right of impressing American seamen. The literary, metaphysical, or social qualities of Americans, their “enlarged conceptions,” and the grandeur or littleness of their measures, had by common consent ceased to enter into discussion, pending a settlement of the simpler issue, whether Americans could fight. For a long time the English press encouraged the belief that Americans were as incapable of fighting as of producing poets and historians. Their naval victories were attributed to British seamen. Perhaps the first turn of the tide was in November, 1813, when news of Perry’s victory on Lake Erie crossed in London the news of Napoleon’s defeat at Leipzig. Perry’s victory, like those of Hull, Decatur, and Bainbridge, was too complete for dispute: “It may, however, serve to diminish our vexation at this occurrence to learn that the flotilla in question was not any branch of the British navy, ... but a local force, a kind of mercantile military.”[463]
By a curious coincidence, Castlereagh’s official letter to Monroe, offering direct negotiation, was dated the same day, November 4, when news of the victory at Leipzig met in London news of the defeat on Lake Erie, and Castlereagh probably meant to allow no newspaper prejudices to obstruct a peace; but public opinion was slow to recover its balance. When news arrived that the Americans had captured Malden, recovered Detroit, and destroyed Proctor’s army on the Thames, the “Courier” showed the first symptom of change in opinion by expressing a somewhat simple-minded wish to hear no more about the Americans:—
“The intelligence is unpleasant, but we confess that we do not view, and have never from the beginning of the war viewed, the events in America with any very powerful interest. The occurrences in Europe will no doubt produce a very decisive effect upon the American government; and unless it is more obstinate and stupid in its hostility than even we think it, it will do as the other allies of Bonaparte have done,—abandon him.”
If the national extravagance could be expected to show its full force in one direction rather than in another, naturalized Americans taken in arms were certain to produce it. The issue was regularly raised after Van Rensselaer’s defeat at Queenston in 1812. When the American prisoners arrived at Quebec, they were mustered, and twenty-three native-born subjects of Great Britain, belonging to the First, Sixth, and Thirteenth U. S. Infantry, were taken from the ranks and shipped to England to be put on trial as British subjects for bearing arms against their king. The American agent in London reported to the President that the men had arrived there for the reason given. Secretary Armstrong, May 15, 1813, then ordered twenty-three British soldiers into close confinement as hostages. The British government directed Sir George Prevost to put double the number of Americans in close confinement, and Sir George, in giving notice of this measure to General Wilkinson, October 17, 1813,[464] added:—
“I have been further instructed by his Majesty’s government to notify to you for the information of the government of the United States that the commanders of his Majesty’s armies and fleets on the coasts of America have received instructions to prosecute the war with unmitigated severity against all cities, towns, and villages belonging to the United States, and against the inhabitants thereof, if, after this communication shall have been made to you, and a reasonable time given for its being transmitted to the American government, that government shall unhappily not be deterred from putting to death any of the soldiers who now are or who may hereafter be kept as hostages for the purposes stated in the letter from Major-General Dearborn.”