stance in which a brig of the United
States had failed to overtake a schooner." One member only, Mr. Reed,
of Massachusetts, spoke against the whole scheme. Though opposed to
the war, he said, he wished it conducted on correct principles. He
"was warranted by facts in saying that no force would be half as
efficient, in proportion to its expense; none would be of so much
service to the country; none certainly would touch the enemy half so
much as a naval force of a proper character;" which, he affirmed, this
was not. Ingersoll's amendment was rejected, obtaining only
twenty-five votes. The bill went again to conference, and on November
11, 1814, was reported and passed, fixing the limits of armament at
from eight to sixteen guns; a paltry addition of two. Forty years
later the editor of the "Debates of Congress," Senator Benton, wrote,
"This was a movement in the right direction. Private armed vessels,
and the success of small ships of war cruising as privateers, had
taught Congress that small vessels, not large ships, were the
effective means of attacking and annoying the enemy's commerce."[265]

The final test was not permitted, to determine what success would have
attended the operations of several Baltimore schooners, united under
the single control of a man like Porter or Perry, and limited strictly
to the injury of the enemy's commerce by the destruction of prizes,
without thought of profit by sending them in. The advent of peace put
a stop to an experiment which would have been most instructive as well
as novel. Looking to other experiences of the past, it may be said
with confidence little short of certainty that, despite the
disadvantage of size, several schooners thus working in concert, and
with pure military purpose, would effect vastly more than the same
number acting separately, with a double eye to gain and glory. The
French privateer squadrons of Jean Bart and Duguay Trouin, in the
early eighteenth century, the example of the celebrated "Western"
squadrons of British frigates in the war of the French Revolution, as
protectors and destroyers of commerce, demonstrated beyond
peradventure the advantage of combined action in this, as in all
military enterprise; while the greater success of the individual
United States cruiser over the average privateer, so singularly
overlooked by the national legislators, gives assurance that Porter's
and Perry's schooners would collectively have done incomparable work.
Thi