The administration then turned its attention to the navy, the pride and glory of the country, and a bill was passed Congress authorizing the equipment of twenty small cruisers. Under its provisions two small squadrons of five vessels each, one to be commanded by Porter and the other by Perry, had been set on foot, whose object was to inflict on the British West Indies the havoc and destruction with which the enemy had visited our coast. But it was difficult to obtain seamen, as most of those who had enlisted during the last year had been sent to the northern lakes to serve on fresh water--a duty always unpalatable to a sailor. Our vessels of war being blockaded, we had no occasion for seamen on the coast, and could find employment for them on the lakes alone. Crowningshield, who had succeeded Jones as Secretary of the Navy, actually recommended a conscription of seamen. In the mean time, Great Britain had concentrated in Canada a larger force than she had ever before assembled there, ready to march on the states, while Cockburn, in possession of Cumberland island, threatened the coasts of Georgia and South Carolina with the same ravages that marked his course in the Chesapeake. Added to all this, a heavy force was known to be on its way to New Orleans, which the government had neglected to defend, and hence expected to see fall into the hands of the enemy. The prospect was black as night around the administration--not a ray of light visited it from any quarter of the heavens. Funds and troops and ships had never been so scarce, while overpowering fleets and armies were assembling on our coasts and frontiers. [Sidenote: Jan. 17, 1815.] In the midst of all this, as if on purpose to drive the government to despair, Dallas came out with a new report on the state of the Treasury, in which he informed it that the year had closed with $19,000,000 of unpaid debts, to meet which there was less than $2,000,000 on hand, and $4,500,000 of taxes not yet collected. The revenue was estimated at $11,000,000, of which only one million was from imports, the rest from taxes. While he thus exhibited the beggared condition of the Treasury, he informed the administration that fifty millions would be needed to meet the expenditures of the coming year, and gravely asked where it all was to come from. The government looked on in dismay, and to what measures it would have been compelled to resort for relief it is impossible to say; but in reviewing that period one shudders to contemplate the probable results of another year of war, and another Hartford Convention. But like the sun suddenly bursting through a dark and ominous thundercloud, just before he sinks beneath the horizon, came at length the news of the great victory at New Orleans, and the conclusion of peace at Ghent. Never before was an administration so loudly called upon to ask that public thanks might be offered for deliverance from great perils. CHAPTER X. HARTFORD CONVENTION. 1814.