France being a nation on the continent of Europe, and Britain an island in its neighbourhood, each of them derived different ideas from their different situations.  The inhabitants of Britain could carry on no foreign trade, nor stir from the spot they dwelt upon, without the assistance of shipping; but this was not the case with France.  The idea therefore of a navy did not arise to France from the same original and immediate necessity which produced to England.  But the question is, that when both of them turn their attention, and employ their revenues the same way, which can be superior?

The annual revenue of France is nearly double that of England, and her number of inhabitants nearly twice as many.  Each of them has the same length of ground on the Channel; besides which, France has several hundred miles extent on the Bay of Biscay, and an opening on the Mediterranean:  and every day proves that practice and exercise make sailors, as well as soldiers, in one country as well as another.

If then Britain can maintain a hundred ships of the line, France can as well support a hundred and fifty, because her revenue and her population are as equal to the one as those of England are to the other.  And the only reason why she has not done it is because she has not till very lately attended to it.  But when she sees, as she now sees, that a navy is the first engine of power, she can easily accomplish it.

England very falsely, and ruinously for herself, infers, that because she had the advantage of France, while France had the smaller navy, that for that reason it is always to be so.  Whereas it may be clearly seen that the strength of France has never yet been tried on a navy, and that she is able to be as superior to England in the extent of a navy, as she is in the extent of her revenues and her population.  And England may lament the day, when, by her insolence and injustice, she provoked in France a maritime disposition.

It is in the power of the combined fleets to conquer every island in the West Indies, and reduce all the British Navy in those places.  For were France and Spain to send their whole naval force in Europe to those islands, it would not be in the power of Britain to follow them with an equal force.  She would still be twenty or thirty ships inferior, were she to send every vessel she had; and in the meantime all the foreign trade of England would lay exposed to the Dutch.

It is a maxim which, I am persuaded, will ever hold good, and more especially in naval operations, that a great power ought never to move in detachments, if it can possibly be avoided; but to go with its whole force to some important object, the reduction of which shall have a decisive effect upon the war.  Had the whole of the French and Spanish fleets in Europe come last spring to the West Indies, every island had been their own, Rodney their prisoner, and his fleet their prize.  From the United States the combined fleets can be supplied with provisions, without the necessity of drawing them from Europe, which is not the case with England.