Introductory 43 



statements are all the harder to confute when they 

 are erroneous, because they are intentionally so. 

 It is not, as with Brenton and Marshall, because he 

 really thinks a British captain can not be beaten, ex 

 cept by some kind of distorted special Providence, 

 for no man says worse things than he does about 

 certain officers and crews. A writer of James' un 

 doubted ability must have known perfectly well that 

 his statements were untrue in many instances, as 

 where he garbles Hilyar's account of Porter's loss, 

 or misstates the comparative force of the fleets on 

 Lake Champlain. 



When he says (p. 194) that Captain Bainbridge 

 wished to run away from the Java, and would have 

 done so if he had not been withheld by the advice 

 of his first lieutenant, who was a renegade English 

 man, 12 it is not of much consequence whether his 

 making the statement was due to excessive credulity 

 or petty meanness, for, in either case, whether the 

 defect was in his mind or his morals, it is enough 

 to greatly impair the value of his other "facts." 

 Again, when James (p. 165) states that Decatur 

 ran away from the Macedonian until, by some mar 

 velous optical delusion, he mistook her for a 32, he 

 merely detracts a good deal from the worth of his 

 own account. When the Americans adopt boarding 

 helmets, he considers it as proving conclusively that 

 they are suffering from an acute attack of cowardice. 

 On p. 122 he says that "had the President, when she 



11 Who, by the way, was Mr. Parker, born in Virginia, and 

 never in England in his life. 



