But enough of peril, as well as mischief, still arises from the present abuses of neutral privilege, to make a longer submission to them highly dangerous and imprudent.

Let us not be so ungrateful, as to consider less anxiously the rights and interests of our brave seamen, because their heroic exploits have improved our security; nor let the glorious dying donation of Nelson to his country prove, like a rich legacy to a prodigal, a pernicious gift, by confirming us in the waste of our maritime patrimony, and thereby insuring our ruin.

An Appendix is added to this Edition, containing some further facts, evidence, and illustrations, as well as a few explanatory remarks. Some of each might have properly made part of the text; but as the latter was thought to require scarcely any material alterations, it seemed fairer towards the purchasers of the First Edition, to place all this new matter in an Appendix, which they may buy separate from the work.

Dec. 19, 1805.

PREFACE

TO THE

THIRD EDITION.

THE grand events, and political reverses, of this extraordinary æra, succeed each other so rapidly, that they outstrip the speed of the press; and every argument on national affairs that turns on their existing position, is in danger of being antiquated before it can be read; or at least, before it can be deliberately examined by the public.

The grand subject of the following sheets, however, is of no fugitive nature, or momentary interest.

The capitulation of Ulm, the battle of Austerlitz, and the peace of Presburgh, have only made the maritime rights of England more important, and their immediate assertion more indispensably necessary, than before, to our safety and national existence.

Though much of great moment might now be added to this little work, the change of circumstances demands no omissions or corrections in it, except in the form of some passages not at all essential to the argument, which relate to situations that no longer exist, and public characters now lost to their country.

The author nevertheless intended to revise and alter the pamphlet before it was reprinted, but found it impossible to take time enough from his private avocations for the purpose, when a great demand for the work, now out of print, and the urgent importance of its subject, forbad his delaying any longer to send it again to the press. The text therefore will be found entirely the same with that of the second edition.

Feb. 21, 1806.

PREFACE

TO THE

FOURTH EDITION.

THE present edition was waiting in the

press, for some intended additions, when a rumour highly alarming to all who know the true maritime interests of their country, reached the author's ears, and induced him to attempt in another mode to arrest decision on the subject of the following sheets, till its new relations can be fully examined *.

The first consequence of that new appeal to the public, is an increased demand for the present work, which has been some time out of print; and he therefore hastens to give a new impression of it, without waiting for such additions as he might otherwise have made, to the notes, at least, if not to the text.

* See the introduction to Mr. Randolph's speech, in the American Congress, English edition, edited by the author of this pamphlet.

a

There is one topic on which he much regrets his inability to enlarge, in a manner at all proportionate to its transcendant importance; namely, the présent exalted state of our navy, and the new argument which it furnishes in the present circumstances of the war, for the resumption of our maritime rights.

In some able and elaborate delineations of the state in which Mr. Pitt left the affairs of this country, and of Europe, at his death, our naval greatness has not been thought worthy of occupying a single inch of the canvass.—We have "States of the Nation;" nay, even "relative "States of Great Britain and France;" from which, should they go down to posterity, it might be supposed that the sun of the British navy, and the star of Austria, had set at the same moment. The French account of the battle of Trafalgar, might be reasonably deemed very abstemious; and in addition to the fifteen sail of the line which we lost on that occasion, it would, perhaps, be fancied that some further signal defeats, which these English cotemporary writers were ashamed to notice, had sunk all our maritime greatness.

Now, I must confess myself old fashioned enough to think that the undisputed dominion