After the receipt of such unpleasant intelligence from Ghent, it was resolved that redoubled energy should be put forth in pushing forward the war, which caused the noble feats of our gallant navy and army to be greatly multiplied. At Plattsburgh, Chippewa, and many other places, victory perched upon our banner. The hearts of our hardy sailors gathered fresh strength, whose successful attempts in annoying the enemy by capturing his trading vessels, caused the most bitter lamentations throughout his realm, and underwriters to advance their rates of insurance between England and Ireland from three-fourths of one to five per cent. The determined spirit thus evinced by us, Great Britain correctly attributed to the arbitrarily assumptive course which she attempted to pursue in conducting the negotiations at Ghent; a spirit which she had the sagacity to discover would never brook the slightest shade of vassalage, or permit the acceptance of dishonorable terms, and also the wisdom to avert the destructive consequences which her varied and wide-spread interests would certainly sustain from the aggressions of those actuated by it, in speedily removing the causes by which it was aroused. A recession was immediately made, not only by the British ministers, who reduced their _sine qua non_ so as to require only the effection of Indian pacification, but by the public journalists in both England and her provinces. They spoke in more respectful terms of the United States, and abated to a good extent their domineering attempts. Still some of the objectionable terms proposed at first as the basis of an arrangement, were adhered to. The cession of such a portion of our territory as should secure a permanent and safe communication to England between Quebec and Halifax, was required pertinaciously. The American commissioners assumed the responsibility, at the risk of breaking off the negotiation, of rejecting such terms, and indeed all that did not come within the limit of their instructions, by informing the English commissioners, that it was perfectly fruitless, besides a waste of time, to bring forward and attempt to connect with the treaty, subjects respecting which they were not empowered to negotiate; subjects which were many of them foreign to their purpose, had no natural relation to it, and which if desirable might be definitely settled by subsequent negotiation, without being made a party to their present proposed arrangement. They affirmed that they had ‘no relation to the subsisting differences between the two countries; they are inconsistent with acknowledged principles of public law; they are founded neither on reciprocity nor on any of the usual bases of negotiation, neither on that of the _uti possidetis_ or of _status ante bellum_; they would inflict the most vital injury on the United States by dismembering their territory, by arresting their natural growth and increase of population, and by leaving their