. It was
studiously fair in tone. It commended the American author's work in many
respects. While doing so, however, it attacked him for having made no
use of the "Naval History of Great Britain" by William James, a history
which it spoke of in a gushing way as approaching "as nearly to
perfection in its own line as any historical work perhaps ever did." It
also labored heavily to break the force of some of Cooper's statements
by charging him with making assertions without evidence or against
evidence. James was a veterinary surgeon who had come to this country
before the war of 1812 to practice his profession. After the breaking
out of hostilities he left it, or rather, as he says, "escaped from it,
before being taken prisoner into the interior"--whatever that may mean.
In the early part of "the steelyard and arithmetical war," as Cooper
phrased it, which has raged with extreme violence ever since the peace
of Ghent, James bore a gallant and conspicuous part. He published a
pamphlet on the subject, which, in 1817, came out expanded into a
volume. In it he showed conclusively that his countrymen had been
utterly wrong in supposing that they had met with any naval reverses
during the war of 1812. The falsity of this assumption he (p. 206)
satisfactorily established by explaining that the Americans were the
most inveterate liars upon the face of the earth. By their deceptive and
fraudulent accounts they had beguiled the English, a self-distrustful
and self-depreciating people, into believing that they had been
defeated, where they had really been victorious. Heroes, indeed, can be
overcome by sufficient odds; and James was always prepared with ample
explanations to account for failure in special cases. He also convicted
the officers of the American navy not merely of lying in their official
reports--which was a duty expected of them both by government and
people--but of cowardice in action, of misconduct in their operations,
and of brutality toward enemies whom the chance of war threw into their
power. A work like this not merely filled a gap in historical
literature, it supplied a national want. It was accordingly received
with such favor that its author went on to produce a history of the
British navy from 1793 to the accession of George IV. In this he
embodied his previous narrative; and a grateful people has never ceased
to cherish a work which showed it that it had succeeded where previously
it had been labor