, with the
Prince Regent's ratification, to be exchanged against that of the
President; but he was especially instructed that the exchange should
not be made unless the ratification by the United States was without
alteration, addition, or exclusion, in any form whatsoever.
Hostilities were not to cease until such action had taken place. The
British Government were apparently determined that concessions wrung
from them, by considerations foreign to the immediate struggle, should
not be subjected to further modification in the Senate.

Mr. Baker, the British _charge_, sailed in the British sloop of war
"Favorite," accompanied by Mr. Carroll bearing the despatches of the
American commissioners. The "Favorite" arrived in New York on
Saturday, February 11. The treaty was ratified by the President, as it
stood, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, on the 17th
of February, 1815.

* * * * *

A year after the conclusion of peace, a weighty opinion as to the
effect of the War of 1812 upon the national history was expressed by
one of the commissioners, Mr. Albert Gallatin. For fifteen years past,
no man had been in closer touch with the springs of national life,
national policy, and national action; as representative in Congress,
and as intimate adviser of two consecutive Presidents, in his position
as Secretary of the Treasury. His experience, the perspicuity of his
intellect, and his lucidity of thought and expression, give particular
value to his conclusions; the more so that to some extent they are the
condemnation, regretfully uttered, of a scheme of political conduct
with the main ideas of which he had been closely identified. He wrote:
"The war has been productive of evil and of good, but I think the good
preponderates. Independent of the loss of lives, and of the property
of individuals, the war has laid the foundations of permanent taxes
and military establishments, which the Republicans[526] had deemed
unfavorable to the happiness and free institutions of the country. But
under our former system we were becoming too selfish, too much
attached exclusively to the acquisition of wealth, above all, too much
confined in our political feelings to local and state objects. The war
has renewed and reinstated the national feelings and character which
the Revolution had given, and which were daily lessening. The people
have now more general objects of attachment, with which their prid