Expert opinion down the ages

From the excellent Perilous Fight by Stephen Budiansky, an account of the naval aspects of the War of 1812. Page 32.

America’s grasping commercialism and braying talk of liberty, most Britons felt, were all of a piece with its upstart vulgarity. An honest recognition of America’s ongoing dependency on Britain for its very survival, economically and politically, ought to make Americans more grateful and less strident: more willing to accept the place Britain wished to assign her as a very junior partner; happy to behave, in other words, more as the colony they really, in fact, still were, not the excessively proud nation their upset victory at Yorktown had led them to declare themselves to be. “The Alps and Apennines of America are the British Navy,” asserted the Times of London. “If ever that should be removed, a short time will suffice to establish the head-quarters of a Duke-Marshal at Washington, and to divide the territory of the Union into military prefectures.” The even more jingoistic British newspaper the Courier chimed in with the observation that while America was arguably advantageous to Great Britain, Great Britain was necessary to America: “It is British capital, which directly or indirectly, sets half the industry of America in motion: it is the British fleets that give it protection and security.”