The loss of two or three thirty-eight gun frigates on the ocean was a matter of trifling consequence to the British government, which had a force of four ships-of-the-line and six or eight frigates in Chesapeake Bay alone, and which built every year dozens of ships-of-the-line and frigates to replace those lost or worn out; but although the American privateers wrought more injury to British interests than was caused or could be caused by the American navy, the pride of England cared little about mercantile losses, and cared immensely for its fighting reputation. The theory that the American was a degenerate Englishman,--a theory chiefly due to American teachings,--lay at the bottom of British politics. Even the late British minister at Washington, Foster, a man of average intelligence, thought it manifest good taste and good sense to say of the Americans in his speech of February 18, 1813, in Parliament, that “generally speaking, they were not a people we should be proud to acknowledge as our relations.”[11] Decatur and Hull were engaged in a social rather than in a political contest, and were aware that the serious work on their hands had little to do with England’s power, but much to do with her manners. The mortification of England at the capture of her frigates was the measure of her previous arrogance. The process of acquiring knowledge in such light as was furnished by the cannon of Hull, Decatur, and Bainbridge could not be rendered easy or rapid. News of the American victories dropped in at intervals, as though American captains intentionally prolonged the enjoyment of their certain success, in order to keep England in constant ill temper. News of the “Java” arrived about the middle of March, and once more the press broke into a chorus of complaints. The “Times” renewed its outcry; the “Courier” abused the “Times” for its “tone of whining lamentation, of affected sensibility, and puerile grief,” but admitted that the behavior of the American frigates seemed extraordinary; while the “Pilot,” the chief naval authority, lamented in set periods the incomprehensible event:--