The ministry had decided, that "_the punishment of a few of the worst sort of traitors, such as Hancock and his crew, might be sufficient to teach the rest their duty, in future_."--"Some men of rank in the army," says Gordon, i. 457, "treated all idea of resistance, by the Americans, with the utmost contempt. They are neither soldiers, nor ever can be made so, being naturally of a pusillanimous disposition, and utterly incapable of any sort of order or discipline; and by their laziness, uncleanliness, and radical defect of constitution, they are disabled from going through the service of a campaign. Many ludicrous stories, to that purport, were told, greatly to the entertainment of the house." Jonathan turned out, at the end of the Bull baiting, to have been neither a fool nor a coward: and the American Congress received a memorable compliment from Lord Chatham--"_For genuine sagacity, for singular moderation, for manly spirit, for sublime sentiments, and simplicity of language, for everything respectable and honorable, the Congress of Philadelphia shines unrivalled_." In the war of 1812, Bull was the very identical Bull, that he had been before: Frenchmen were frogs; Yankees were cowards--there was nobody that could fight, on the land or the sea, but Bull. "It has always," says that wittiest, and, I fear, wickedest of wags, William Cobbett, while addressing Lord Liverpool, "been the misfortune of England, that her rulers and her people have spoken and have thought contemptuously of the Americans. Was there a man in the country, who did not despise the American navy? Was there a public writer beside myself, who did not doom that navy to destruction in a month? Did not all parties exceedingly relish the description given, in a very august assembly, of '_half a dozen of fir frigates, with bits of striped bunting tied to their mast heads_'! Did not the Guerriere sail up and down the American coast, with her name, written on her flag, challenging those fir frigates? Did not the whole nation, with one voice exclaim at the affair of the _Little Belt_--'Only let Rogers come _within reach_ of one of our _frigates_!' If such was the opinion of the whole nation, with what justice is the Board of Admiralty blamed, for not sending out the means of combatting this extraordinary sort of foe? and for issuing a privilege to our frigates to run away from one of those _fir things with a bit of striped bunting at its mast head_? The result of the former war, while it enlightened nobody, added to the vindictiveness of hundreds of thousands; so that we have entered into this war with all our old stock of contempt, and a vastly increased stock of rancor. To think that the American republic is to be a great power is unsupportable. Of the effect of this contempt I know nobody, who has so much reason to repent, as the officers of his Majesty's navy. If they had triumphed, it would only have been over half a dozen