might have been, would have held me up to _ex parte_ sympathy, so long as
it suited its purposes, or until the novelty of some new case offered an
inducement to supplant me. But I had been wronged by both belligerents;
and it was soon agreed, by mutual consent, to drop the whole subject. As
for redress or compensation, I was never fool enough to seek it. On the
contrary, finding how unpopular it made a man among the merchants, to
_prove_ anything against Great Britain, just at that moment, I was wisely
silent, thus succeeding in saving my character, which would otherwise have
followed my property, as the shortest method of making a troublesome
declaimer hold his tongue.

Most young persons will doubtless hesitate to believe that such a state of
things could ever have existed in a nation calling itself independent;
but, in the first place, it must be remembered, that the passions of
factions never leave their followers independent of their artifices and
designs; and, in the next place, all who knew the state of this country in
1804, must admit it was not independent in mind of either England or
France. Facts precede thought in everything among us; and public opinion
was as much in arrears of the circumstances of the country, then,
as--as--to what shall I liken it?--why, as it is to-day. I know no better
or truer parallel. I make no doubt that the same things would be acted
over again, were similar wrongs to be committed by the same powerful
belligerents.

Marble was ludicrously enraged at these little instances of the want of
true nationality in his countrymen. He was not a man to be bullied into
holding his tongue; and, for years afterwards, he expressed his opinions
on the subject of an American's losing his ship and cargo, as I had lost
mine, without even a hope of redress, with a freedom that did more credit
to his sense of right, than to his prudence. As for myself, as has just
been said, I never even attempted to procure justice. I knew its utter
hopelessness; and the Dawn and her cargo went with the hundreds of other
ships and cargoes, that were sunk in the political void created by the
declaration of war, in 1812.

This is an unpleasant subject to me. I could gladly have passed it over,
for it proves that the political association of this country failed in one
of the greatest ends of all such associations;--but nothing is ever gained
by suppressing truth, on such a matter. Let those who read reflect on the
pas