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HISTORY OF MARINE ARCHITECTURE.

sidercd as almost impossible to have displayed in the extent to which it was car-ried. The commerce of France, on the other hand, had, through necessity,dwindled almost into a shadow; and there is no need of laboured argument toprove, that it must require much greater activity and exertion to capture five shipsout of twenty, than twenty out of a thousand. Such, nearly, was the relativeproportion between the shipping of the two countries; and though the losseswhich took place might be grievously felt by a variety of rich and powerful per-sons, yet those misfortunes certainly establish nothing either in advancement otthe naval consequence of the enemy, nor are they a certain proof of mismanage-ment in regard to that of Britain, or its insufficiency to answer those purposeswhich were naturally to be expected from it.

The murmurs were in great measure closed by the serious controversy alreadyalluded to. England became, perhaps, more cautious: her commercial specu-lations were regulated with more prudence, and the complainants found to theircost, that by reducing their civil concerns to a lower state, though still in a farmore flourishing one than that of the enemy, they had to a certainty reducedtheir positive losses, but had, in the same ratio, diminished their gains also. Oneobvious comment naturally obtrudes itself on this occasion : that extensive lossmust, in all cases of war, be the inevitable consequence of extensive commerce ;that it is one of those strange, and, in some measure, scarcely comprehensibleparadoxes, particularly by the actual sufferers; that the commercial prosperity ofa nation may, in great measure, be deduced from the magnitude of its losses, pro-vided it has acquired that ascendency at sea which enables it to confine the fleetsof its adversary to its own ports.

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