By this time Washington was pretty wearied of the _Dacia_, for mature consideration had convinced the Department that Great Britain had the right on its side.

Washington would have been only too glad to find a way out of the difficult position into which it had been forced, and this Page well understood.
But this government always finds itself in an awkward plight in any controversy with Great Britain, because the hyphenates raise such a noise that it has difficulty in deciding such disputes upon their merits.

To ignore the capture of this ship by the British would have brought all this hullabaloo again about the ears of the Administration.
But the position of France is entirely different; the memories of Lafayette and Rochambeau still exercise a profound spell on the American mind; France does not suffer from the persecution of hyphenate populations, and Americans will stand even outrages from France without getting excited.

Page knew that if the British seized the _Dacia_, the cry would go up in certain quarters for immediate war, but that, if France committed the same crime, the guns of the adversary would be spiked.

It was purely a case of sentiment and "psychology." And so the event proved.