Although the English newspapers expressed a false idea of the general will, and were even at cross purposes with the Ministry in American matters, their tone was in some respects an indifferent barometer for measuring the elation or depression of the public temper, and exercised some influence, rather apparent than real, on the momentary attitudes of government. Had Castlereagh and his colleagues been really controlled by the press, no American peace could have been made. Whatever spirit of friendship for America might exist was necessarily silent, and only extravagant enmity found expression either in the press or in society. Perhaps because ministers were believed to wish for peace with the United States, the London “Times,” which was not a ministerial journal, made itself conspicuous in demanding war. The “Times” had not previously shown a vindictive spirit, but it represented the Wellesley and Canning interest, which could discover no better course than that of being more English than England, and more patriotic than the Government. The “Times” was always ably written and well edited, but its language toward the United States showed too strong a connection with that of the Federalists, from whose public and private expressions the press of England formed its estimate of American character. The “Times” indulged to excess in the pleasure of its antipathy. Next to Napoleon, the chief victim of English hatred was Madison. For so mild a man Madison possessed a remarkable faculty of exciting invective. The English press surpassed the American Federalists in their allusions to him, and the “Times” was second to no English newspaper in the energy of its vituperation. “The lunatic ravings of the philosophic statesman of Washington” were in its political category of a piece with “his spaniel-like fawning on the Emperor of Russia.[1]... The most abject of the tools of the deposed tyrant; ... doubtless he expected to be named Prince of the Potomack or Grand Duke of Virginia.”[2] The “Sun” somewhat less abusively spoke of “that contemptible wretch Madison, and his gang;”[3] but the “Times” habitually called him liar and impostor.