The “Courier” felt that Americans were not Englishmen, and could not forgive it, but was unable to admit that they might still exercise a considerable influence on human affairs:-- “They have added nothing to literature, nothing to any of the sciences; they have not produced one good poet, not one celebrated historian! Their statesmen are of a mixed breed,--half metaphysicians, half politicians; all the coldness of the one with all the cunning of the other. Hence we never see anything enlarged in their conceptions or grand in their measures.”[462] These reasons were hardly sufficient to prove the right of impressing American seamen. The literary, metaphysical, or social qualities of Americans, their “enlarged conceptions,” and the grandeur or littleness of their measures, had by common consent ceased to enter into discussion, pending a settlement of the simpler issue, whether Americans could fight. For a long time the English press encouraged the belief that Americans were as incapable of fighting as of producing poets and historians. Their naval victories were attributed to British seamen. Perhaps the first turn of the tide was in November, 1813, when news of Perry’s victory on Lake Erie crossed in London the news of Napoleon’s defeat at Leipzig. Perry’s victory, like those of Hull, Decatur, and Bainbridge, was too complete for dispute: “It may, however, serve to diminish our vexation at this occurrence to learn that the flotilla in question was not any branch of the British navy, ... but a local force, a kind of mercantile military.”[463] By a curious coincidence, Castlereagh’s official letter to Monroe, offering direct negotiation, was dated the same day, November 4, when news of the victory at Leipzig met in London news of the defeat on Lake Erie, and Castlereagh probably meant to allow no newspaper prejudices to obstruct a peace; but public opinion was slow to recover its balance. When news arrived that the Americans had captured Malden, recovered Detroit, and destroyed Proctor’s army on the Thames, the “Courier” showed the first symptom of change in opinion by expressing a somewhat simple-minded wish to hear no more about the Americans:-- “The intelligence is unpleasant, but we confess that we do not view, and have never from the beginning of the war viewed, the events in America with any very powerful interest. The occurrences in Europe will no doubt produce a very decisive effect upon the American government; and unless it is more obstinate and stupid in its hostility than even _we_ think it, it will do as the other allies of Bonaparte have done,--abandon him.”