HISTORY OF MARINE ARCHITECTURE.
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meat retains the same name, the mother country. This is certainly glossingover in the best manner, but it by no means does away those frailties, those de-sires, those (we had nearly said) vices, which gave birth to this pursuit; forreflecting on the mischiefs it has occasioned, the blood that has been shed forits protection, and the varied miseries it certainly has introduced into the humansystem, if our courage were equal to our wishes, we certainly should not fail topronounce it otherwise than one of the worst kind.
As this intercourse was considerably aided by navigation ; nay, as it was inmany cases next to impossible it should subsist without some knowledge of thatart, it soon became necessary to apply earnestly to it, and improve those means bywhich the colony itself had been originally conveyed to its new territory. Theexample of one nation proved, from the advantage derived by pursuing it, aspecies of precept to all the rest of the known world, and the mania of ambition,avarice and depravity, spread rapidly, like a pestilence, over the face of the earth.
Soon as the contagion had so far insinuated itself into the human system as tomingle with the habit, and become a kind of permanent or chronic disease, it wasfound necessary to cherish and encourage its progress to the highest crisis; just as ablain, which,though painful in its growth,is attended with care till it acquires its dueheight, because it is supposed to contribute to the health of the body : for thisreason the arm of government was stretched forth, and the strictest, the mostenvious attention unremittingly paid to the creation of an avaricious monopoly,though the act was an invasion of the natural, and dearest rights of the human race.
Every commercial state formed round itself a vortex of greater or less extent,according to the power which raised it, and that, not unfrequently spreading bydegrees, almost imperceptible, soon encountered others sometimes of superior,though generally speaking, of less influence than its own. Then arose the con-test in which, as a natural consequence, the power of the weakest was, almostwithout exception, swallowed up, in that of the mightier foe : hence sprung theintimate and close connexion between commerce and war, an alliance, howeverstrange and unnatural it may appear, which has been continued from very earlyages down to the end of the eighteenth century.
The uniform conduct of the Phoenicians, who, as they were among the first,so did they soon render themselves the most powerful of all the ancient com-mercial nations, forcibly displays the truth, and may stand also as an account ofthe behaviour of all the rest of the world, when acting under similar cir-cumstances. -Almost in the infancy of their state, encouraged by their. situation,