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HISTORY OF MARINE ARCHITECTURE.

must naturally lead the philanthropic mind to lament any discovery that maytend to feed the fury of contest, although the advantages derived from it,while confined within a peaceful and innocent channel, might have very stronglycontributed to our general ease, our comfort, and our enjoyments.

Let the blame rest, however, on those whose misapplication of such discove-ries Britain has been forced for her own security to adopt; and, finding, aswe do at the present day, that such reflections may distract us, but cannot re-move or allay the evil that has gone forth, it becomes highly incumbent, as anatural principle, and to put us, at least on an equality with the rest ofmankind, that we should investigate every art and science that can possiblycontribute to our defence, or can advance our consequence among nations, muchas we are at the same time compelled to condemn the ends to which those arts,originally innocent in themselves, have been perverted. Among the foremost ofthese, at least when we speak in relation to such as are cultivated by countriesand nations bordering on the sea, stands the science of ship-building, the originof which is certainly almost coeval with the existence of the world. This asser-tion will not be disputed among Christian nations; and, we believe, will bealmost as well admitted by all other countries where the habits and pursuitsof men have led their ideas on this subject to any farther attention than wefind bestowed on it by those small secluded societies whose remote situation,and almost primitive simplicity, have rendered any study or application unne-cessary, farther than what we may, without impropriety, say, appears to beconnected with their very existence.

It would be a fruitless attempt to investigate, not merely the first inventorof Marine Architecture, but even the country, or quarter of the world fromwhence the science derived its birth, or origin. The remote distanceof time, aided by the hyperbolical fictions of poets and historians, render theattempt absurd, and indeed ridiculous, because the result of the enquiry can-not produce any decisive determination. It may be conjectured that theinquisitive active spirit of enterprize, constitutionally, as it were, implanted inour nature, displayed itself at one and the same time, in a variety of quartersand districts; for the primitive ideas of men dispersed over the face of theglobe unconnected with, uncommunicating with each other, and totally ignoranteven of each others existence, appear in such perfect unison as to invention, thatthey extremely well warrant this supposition.

At the time Caesar invaded Britain the inhabitants of this country, so far as re-garded civilization and improvement, might be pronounced almost in a state of

nature.