were heartily tired of
a war in which they could see neither profit nor glory, and even the
Duke of Wellington had announced it as his opinion "that no military
advantage can be expected if the war goes on, and I would have great
reluctance in undertaking the command unless we made a serious effort
first to obtain peace without insisting upon keeping any part of our
conquests." The reverses of first-class British armies at Plattsburg,
Baltimore, and New Orleans had been a bitter blow to English pride.
Moreover, British commerce on the seas had been largely destroyed by a
host of Yankee privateers, and the common people in England were
suffering from scarcity of food and raw materials and from high prices
to a degree comparable with the distress inflicted by the German
submarine campaign a century later. And although the terms of peace were
unsatisfactory to many Americans, it was implied and understood that the
flag and the nation had won a respect and recognition which should
prevent a recurrence of such wrongs as had caused the War of 1812. One
of the Peace Commissioners, Albert Gallatin, a man of large experience,
unquestioned patriotism, and lucid intelligence, set it down as his
deliberate verdict:

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 foundation of
permanent taxes and military establishments which the Republicans
had deemed unfavorable to the happiness and free institutions of
our 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 feeling and character which the Revolution had given, and
which were daily lessening. The people have now more general
objects of attachment, with which their pride and political
opinions are connected. They are more Americans; they feel and act
more as a nation; and I hope that the permanency of the Union is
thereby better secured.

After a hundred years, during which this peace was unbroken, a commander
of the American navy, speaking at a banquet in the ancient Guildhall of
London, was bold enough to predict: "If the time ever comes when the
British Empire is seriously