As soon as we got over the bar, I gave the pilot my package, and he got into his boat. It was not necessary to shorten sail in order to do this, for the vessel's way did not exceed five knots.
"Do you see the sail, hereaway in the south-eastern board," said the pilot, as he went over the side, pointing towards a white speck on the ocean; "take care of that fellow, and give him as wide a berth as possible, or he may give you a look at Halifax, or Bermuda."
"Halifax, or Bermuda! I have nothing to do with either and shall not go there. Why should I fear that sail?"
"On account of your cargo, and on account of your men. That is His Majesty's ship Leander; she has been off here, now, more than a week. The inward-bound craft say she is acting under some new orders, and they name several vessels that have been seen heading north-east after she had boarded them. This new war is likely to lead to new troubles on the coast, and it is well for all outward-bound ships to be on the look-out."
"_His Majesty's_ ship" was a singular expression for an American to use, towards any sovereign, twenty years after the independence of the country was acknowledged. But, it was common then, nor has it ceased entirely even among the newspapers of the present hour; so much harder is it to substitute a new language than to produce a revolution. Notwithstanding this proof of bad taste in the pilot, I did not disregard his caution. There had been certain unpleasant rumours, up in town for more than a month, that the two great belligerents would be apt to push each other into the old excesses, England and France at that day having such a monopoly of the ocean as to render them somewhat independent of most of the old-fashioned notions of the rights of neutrals. As for America, she was cursed with the cant of economy--an evil that is apt to produce as many bad consequences as the opposite vice, extravagance. The money paid as _interest_ on the sums expended in the war of 1812, might have maintained a navy that would have caused both belligerents to respect her rights, and thereby saved the principal entirely, to say nothing of all the other immense losses dependent on an interrupted trade; but demagogues were at work with their raven throats, and it is not reasonable to expect that the masses can draw very just distinctions on the subject of remote interests, when present expenditure is the question immediately before them. It is true, I remember a modern French logician, who laid down the dogma that the tendency of democracies being to excesses, if you give a people the power, they would tax themselves to death; but, however true this theory may be in the main, it certainly is not true _quoad_ the good citizens of the great model republic. It was bad enough to be accursed with a spurious economy; but this was not the heaviest grievance that then weighed upon the national interests. The demon of faction, party spirit, was actively at work in the country; and it was almost as rare to find a citizen who was influenced purely by patriotic and just views, as it would be to find an honest man in the galleys. The nation, as a rule, was either English or French. Some swore by the First Consul, and some by Billy Pitt. As for the commercial towns, taken in connection with the upper classes, these were little more than so many reflections of English feeling, exaggerated and rendered still more factitious, by distance. Those who did not swallow all that the English tories chose to pour down their throats, took the _pillules Napoleons_ without gagging. If there were exceptions, they were very few, and principally among travelled men--pilgrims who, by approaching the respective idols, had discovered they were made by human hands!