Page:Henry Adams' History of the United States Vol. 3.djvu/408

396 and could measure with some approach to exactness its probable costs and returns, but they were quite unused to being conquered by peace; and they listened with as much contempt as anger to the American theory that England must surrender at discretion if Americans should refuse any longer to buy woollen shirts and tin kettles. Englishmen asked only whether America would fight, and they took some pains to make inquiries on that point; but it happened that of all the points in question this, which to Englishmen was alone decisive, could be answered in a syllable: No! America would not fight. The President, Congress, the press of both parties in the United States agreed only in this particular. John Randolph's speech on Gregg's Resolution was reprinted in London with a long preface by James Stephen, and proved conclusively that America would submit. Merry came as near to a laugh as his gravity would permit in expressing his contempt for the idea of war, and in urging his Government to resent the Non-importation Act; and although Fox probably thought poorly of Merry's judgment, he could not but show his despatches to the Cabinet if the Cabinet wished to read them. After the slaughter of Pierce, when the Federalist newspapers in New York and the irresponsible mob of seamen clamored for warlike measures, the only effect of the outcry upon England was to stimulate the anti-American prejudice and to embarrass the well-meant efforts of Fox, until his chief newspaper, the "Morning Chronicle," in a