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American Naval Power. 145

in which was more remote, either in time or
place, would have entailed a dissemination of
attention and of power that is as greatly to be
deprecated in statesmanship as it is in the
operations of war. Still, while the government
of the day would gladly have avoided such
complications, it found, as have the statesmen
of all times, that if external interests exist,
whatsoever their character, they cannot be
ignored, nor can the measures which prudence
dictates for their protection be neglected with
safety. Without political ambitions outside
the continent, the commercial enterprise of the
people brought our interests into violent antag-
onism with clear, unmistakable, and vital inter-
ests of foreign belligerent states ; for we shall
sorely misread the lessons of 18 12, and of the
events which led to it, if we fail to see that the
questions in dispute involved issues more im-
mediately vital to Great Britain, in her then
desperate struggle, than they were to ourselves,
and that the great majority of her statesmen
and people, of both parties, so regarded them.
The attempt of our government to temporize
with the difficulty, to overcome violence by
means of peaceable coercion, instead of meeting
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