“in this mild and moderate, though manly and firm, language: ‘You have insulted the dignity of our country by impressing our seamen and compelling them to fight your battles against a Power with whom we are at peace; you have plundered us of much property by that predatory war which you authorize to be carried on against our commerce. To these injuries, insults, and oppression we will submit no longer.... If you persist in your hostile measures, if you absolutely refuse acceding to any propositions of compromise, we must slacken those bonds of friendship by which we have been connected. You must not expect hereafter to find us in your market purchasing your manufactures to so large an amount.’ This is their vulnerable part; by attacking them in their warehouses and workshops, we can reach their vitals.” If Pitt should retaliate, Gregg would go further; he would confiscate all the private property belonging to British subjects on which he could lay his hands, treaty stipulations to the contrary notwithstanding. The Pennsylvanian contented himself with pacific measures, and his oratory had the merit of consistency with his party doctrines and principles; but the democracy of Massachusetts, which would never understand or obey the theories of Virginia and Pennsylvania, could not rest content with Gregg’s Quaker ideas. “After the course we are now taking,” said Crowninshield, “should Britain persist in her captures and in her oppressive treatment of our seamen, and refuse to give them up, I would not hesitate to meet her in war. But, as I observed before, I do not believe Great Britain will go to war. Our trade is too valuable to her. She knows, too, that in such an event she will lose her eastern provinces; the States of Vermont and Massachusetts will ask no other assistance than their own militia to take Canada and Nova Scotia. Some of her West Indian islands will also fall. She knows also other things. Her subjects own sixteen millions of the old public debt of the United States, eight millions of the Louisiana stock, and three or four millions bank stock, and have private debts to the amount of ten or twelve millions,--amounting in the whole to nearly forty millions of dollars. Will Great Britain, by going to war, risk her provinces and this large amount of property? I think she will not put so much to hazard.”