ary's River;" "to
destroy and lay waste," so he notified the United States Government,
"such towns and districts upon the coast as may be found
assailable."[359] In the first heat of his wrath, he used in his order
an expression, "and you will spare merely the lives of the unarmed
inhabitants of the United States," which he afterwards asked Prevost
to expunge, as it might be construed in a sense he never meant;[360]
and he reported to his Government that he had sent private
instructions to exercise forbearance toward the inhabitants.[361] It
can easily be believed that, like many words spoken in passion, the
phrase far outran his purposes; but it has significance and value as
indicating the manner in which Americans had come to be regarded in
Great Britain, through the experience of the period of peace and the
recent years of war.

However the British Government might justify in terms the impressment
of seamen from American ships, or the delay of atonement for such an
insult as that of the Chesapeake, the nation which endured the same,
content with reams of argument instead of blow for blow, had sunk
beneath contempt as an inferior race, to be cowed and handled without
gloves by those who felt themselves the masters. Nor was the matter
bettered by the notorious fact that the interference with the freedom
of American trade, which Great Britain herself admitted to be outside
the law, had been borne unresisted because of the pecuniary stake
involved. The impression thus produced was deepened by the confident
boasts of immediate successes in Canada, made by leading members of
the party which brought on the war; followed as these were by a
display of inefficiency so ludicrous that opponents, as well native as
foreign, did not hesitate to apply to it the word "imbecility." The
American for a dozen years had been clubbed without giving evidence of
rebellion, beyond words; now that he showed signs of restiveness,
without corresponding evidence of power, he should feel the lash, and
there need be no nicety in measuring punishment. Codrington, an
officer of mark and character, who joined Cochrane at this time as
chief of staff, used expressions which doubtless convey the average
point of view of the British officer of that day: President Madison,
"by letting his generals burn villages in Canada again, has been
trying to excite terror; but as you may shortly see by the public
exposition of the Admiral's orders, the terror and the