match for three of the same nominal class--the 38-gun
frigate--which was the most numerous and efficient element in the
British cruising force. The American forty-four was unknown to British
experience, and could be met only by ships of the line. Add to this
consideration the remoteness of the American shore, and its dangerous
proximity to very vital British interests, and there are found the
elements of the difficult problem presented to the Admiralty by the
combination of American force--such as it was--with American advantage
of position for dealing a severe blow to British welfare at the
period, 1805-1812, when the empire was in the height of its
unsupported and almost desperate struggle with Napoleon; when Prussia
was chained, Austria paralyzed, and Russia in strict bonds of
alliance--personal and political--with France.

If conditions were thus menacing, as we know them to to have been in
1812, when war was declared, and the invasion of Russia just
beginning, when the United States navy was "fourteen pendants," what
would they not have been in 1807, had the nation possessed even one
half of the twenty ships of the line which Gouverneur Morris, a shrewd
financier, estimated fifteen years before were within her competency?
While entirely convinced of the illegality of the British measures,
and feeling keenly--as what American even now cannot but feel?--the
humiliation and outrage to which his country was at that period
subjected, the writer has always recognized the stringent compulsion
under which Great Britain lay, and the military wisdom, in his
opinion, of the belligerent measures adopted by her to sustain her
strength through that unparalleled struggle; while in the matter of
impressment, it is impossible to deny--as was urged by Representative
Gaston of North Carolina and Gouverneur Morris--that her claim to the
service of her native seamen was consonant to the ideas of the time,
as well as of utmost importance to her in that hour of dire need.
Nevertheless, submission by America should have been impossible; and
would have been avoidable if for the fourteen pendants there had been
a dozen sail of the line, and frigates to match. To an adequate
weighing of conditions there will be indeed resentment for impressment
and the other mortifications; but it is drowned in wrath over the
humiliating impotence of an administration which, owing to
preconceived notions as to peace, made such endurance necessary. It is
not