g as she could float. Such sensitiveness seemed
extravagant in a society which had been hardened by centuries of
warfare; yet the Times reflected fairly the feelings of Englishmen.
George Canning, speaking in open Parliament not long afterward, said
that the loss of the Guerriere and the Macedonian produced a sensation
in the country scarcely to be equaled by the most violent convulsions of
nature. "Neither can I agree with those who complain of the shock of
consternation throughout Great Britain as having been greater than the
occasion required.... It cannot be too deeply felt that the sacred spell
of the invincibility of the British navy was broken by those unfortunate
captures."

Of all spells that could be cast on a nation, that of believing itself
invincible was perhaps the one most profitably broken; but the process
of recovering its senses was agreeable to no nation, and to England, at
that moment of distress, it was as painful as Canning described. The
matter was not mended by the Courier and Morning Post, who, taking their
tone from the Admiralty, complained of the enormous superiority of the
American frigates, and called them "line-of-battle ships in disguise."
Certainly the American forty-four was a much heavier ship than the
British thirty-eight, but the difference had been as well known in the
British navy before these actions as it was afterward; and Captain
Dacres himself, the Englishman who best knew the relative force of the
ships, told his court of inquiry a different story:--"I am so well aware
that the success of my opponent was owing to fortune, that it is my
earnest wish, and would be the happiest period of my life, to be once
more opposed to the Constitution, with them [the old crew] under my
command, in a frigate of similar force with the Guerriere." After all
had been said, the unpleasant result remained that in future, British
frigates, like other frigates, could safely fight only their inferiors
in force. What applied to the Guerriere and Macedonian against the
Constitution and United States, where the British force was inferior,
applied equally to the Frolic against the Wasp, where no inferiority
could be shown. The British newspapers thenceforward admitted what
America wished to prove, that, ship for ship, British were no more than
the equals of Americans.

Society soon learned to take a more sensible view of the subject; but as
the first depression passed away, a consciousness of personal