strikes in various directions at the very vitals of our national security; it tends powerfully and directly to the depression of our maritime power, and to the exaltation of the navy of France.

Let it be considered, in the first place, that by this licentious use of the neutral flags, the enemy is enabled to employ his whole military marine, in purposes of offensive war.

He is not obliged to maintain a squadron, or a ship, for the defence of his colonial ports; nor does he, in fact, station so much as a frigate, in the East or West Indies, except for the purpose of cruizing against our commerce. The nume rous and frequent detachments of the convoy service, are also totally saved.

While a great dispersion of his maritime force, and the consequent risk of its defeat and capture, in detail, are thus avoided, he obtains by its concentration near the seat of empire a most formidable advantage; since the British navy has to guard our colonies, and our commerce, in all its branches, and is, consequently, widely dispersed in every quarter of the globe.

During the last war, such considerations might seem of little moment, because the united marine of France and her confederates, was reduced to so very feeble a state, and so little effort was made for its restoration, that no advantage of

this kind could raise it from contempt; much less render it a subject of serious apprehension.

But now, the case is widely different. The re-establishment of the French navy, and those of Spain and Holland, is a work on which Buonaparte is not only eagerly intent; but in which he has already made a very alarming progress. Already, the great inferiority of the confederates, in point of actual force, has begun to disappear; and so vast are their means of naval structure and equipment, that except through the precarious diversion of the approaching continental war, we cannot long expect to be superior to their united navies in the number of our ships, though we may hope long to be so, in the skill and bravery of our seamen *.

On our own side, also, I admit, improvement is to be expected; for our Admiralty is happily placed under the auspices of a most able and active minister, who is indefatigable in his efforts for the increase of the navy; and whose com

* It is right to remind the reader, that this passage is reprinted from an edition published before the battle of Trafalgar; but let not even that glorious event render us indifferent to considerations like these. It is not enough in the present times, that our enemy is in all points greatly inferior at sea; while that inferiority, on the degree of which our national safety perhaps depends, can be encreased, and rendered more hopeless.

prehensive knowledge of the whole business of the marine department, in all its ramifications, peculiarly well qualifies him for that momentous work.

The venerable age of Lord Barham has been supposed to be a drawback on his qualifications for office, by those only who are ignorant of his still energetic powers, both of body and mind. It may even be truly said, that the lapse of years, during which his knowledge of the civil business of the Admiralty has been matured by observation and experience, has made him the fitter for his present most arduous station. He resembles the old, but sound and healthy oak, which time has qualified for the most important uses of our navy, by enlarging its girth and its dimensions, without having at all impaired its strength or elasticity *.

* A writer who comments on existing public situations or characters in these eventful times, is in danger that his sheets will become obsolete before they are dry from the press; and it is for this reason, among others, that in the present, and two former editions of this work, no alterations have been made in the text, in a vain attempt to adapt it perfectly to the new political circumstances of the hour. It would be like adjusting a telescope to the meridian of a sky-rocket, or of a shooting star.

It is, however, in their connection with these sheets alone, that the public merits of Lord Barham form a topic of a

In calculating, therefore, on the effect of the enemy's exertions, I allow for every possible counteraction in our own. I suppose that not one slip in our public dockyards, or in those of the merchants, which is fit to receive the keel of a man of war, will be left unoccupied by the Admiralty, except from the want of means to employ it. But there are limits to the power of rapidly increasing in our navy, of which the pub lic at large is not perhaps fully aware. knowledge and activity of Lord Barham cannot immediately replenish our magazines with certain materials necessary in the construction of large ships, of which there is a great and increasing scarcity, not only in England, but in every other maritime country; and which nature can but slowly reproduce.

All the

Buonaparte, from the immense extent of those

transitory kind. His fame, as a minister, though of rapid growth, will, I trust, be of long duration; for it can perish only when the navy of England ceases to be a subject of national glory; or, in other words, when Englishmen cease to have a country.

His Lordship presided at the Board of Admiralty only about nine months; yet a naval administration of greater brilliancy, whether we apply to it the vulgar criterion of success, or appreciate it by the juster standards of wisdom in the design, and energy in the execution of measures, is not to be found in the annals of Great Britain,

European regions, which are now either placed under his yoke, or subjected to his irresistible. influence, and from the effects of that commerce, falsely called neutral, which we fatally tolerate, is well supplied with the largest and best timber, and with abundance of all other materials for ship building; especially in his northern portsWitness the grand scale of his preparations at Antwerp; where he has at this moment on the stocks, eight ships of the line, and many of inferior dimensions. In this new port, the destined rival of Brest and Toulon, he is rapidly forming large naval magazines, which the interior navigation alone may very copiously, supply; and which he purchases in the countries of the North, chiefly with the wine and brandy of France, and with the produce of the hostile colonies, carried in neutral bottoms. I am well informed, that the naval stores which he purchased in the Baltic alone, in the year 1804, amounted in value to eighty millions of livres. In short, he is, conformably to the boast already quoted, employing all the resources of his power and his policy, for the augmentation of his marine; and has not incredibly declared, that before the commencement of a new year, he would add thirty line-of-battle ships to the navy of France.