Congress, after the reception of this protocol and the accompanying despatches, took a different tone, and when the question of ways and means for the coming year was taken up, a spirit was exhibited, that since the declaration of war, had never been witnessed in its deliberations. The fear and hesitation which were weighing it down, vanished, and it began to assume the character and exhibit the qualities belonging to it, but which the spirit of faction had kept in abeyance. The Legislatures of the different states responded to the sentiments of the commissioners--declaring that the terms proposed were insulting and disgraceful, and called for a vigorous prosecution of the war. New York voted a local force of 12,000 men, and Virginia followed her example. It was a grand stroke of policy, on the part of the administration, to fling those despatches at once into Congress and thus before the nation. Their sudden publication took the British Ministry by surprise, for it exposed their extraordinary demands to the whole realm, and they remonstrated against such undiplomatic conduct. Before the Convention of Ghent the English press ridiculed concessions, declaring that punishment must be inflicted on the Americans, and they be chastised into humility and supplication. The war with us was a Lilliputian affair compared to the struggles out of which England had come victorious, and the Convention was not looked upon so much as the meeting of Commissioners to adjust things amicably, as furnishing the opportunity for the American government to make a request to have hostilities cease. But the disasters to Drummond, at Fort Erie, to Prevost at Plattsburgh, and the utter demolition of the British fleet on Champlain, together with the repulse from Baltimore, acted as a condenser on much of this vapor. [Sidenote: Nov. 4.] The vast expenditures wasted on the Canadian frontier were now all to be renewed, newer and stronger armies were to be transported to our shores, and when the Prince Regent opened Parliament he plainly hinted that it would be well to avoid all this, if possible. The arrival of the despatches which the President had laid before Congress, containing the protocol of the English Embassy, created a deep sensation in both houses of Parliament. The claims set up by the English government were loudly denounced by many of the members, and it was soon apparent that if the war was pressed to make them good, a large opposition party would be formed, not only in Parliament but in the country. Sixty manufacturing towns sent in petitions for peace. Cobbett, who had all along defended the conduct of the United States, was unsparing in his flagellations of the British government, and of those papers that advocated the war.