On the 13th March 1778, the Marquis de Noailles, then French Ambassador in London, made the momentous but not unforeseen announcement, that his master had signed a treaty of commerce and friendship with the United States, which he considered as already in possession of their independence. He added the ironical diplomatic expression of a hope that this alliance with the king’s American rebels, as our ministers were bound to consider them, would not disturb the friendly relations between the countries; but both sides knew that war was come. If the fighting did not begin immediately, the explanation of the delay is simply that M. de Sartine had not yet been able to bring the French Navy into thorough order, while King George’s ministers were, if I may use an expression which some of their successors have not scrupled to apply to themselves with a strange inverted pride, “muddling through.” Had the house of Bourbon which ruled in France and Spain, and was resolved to abate the power of England, been in a position to adopt the most effectual method of attack, it would have thrown an overwhelming force into the Channel at once, thereby paralysing us all the world over. But King Louis XVI. was hardly ready, and Spain, according to her custom, was not ready at all. King Charles III. maintained a show of neutrality till the following year, and was allowed to do so by the British Government, which continued till the last moment to profess the belief that he would not intervene. Had Lord North and his colleagues been ready to meet a danger foreseen by everybody else, one British fleet would have been promptly off Brest, while another would have been detached to the Mediterranean to blockade Toulon. Neither side having its squadrons fit for immediate use, there was an interval of pause. One French fleet was prepared at Brest under the Comte D’Orvilliers, a very old officer who had commanded the training squadron during peace, and had in that position proved himself a good instructor and a shrewd judge of character. Its purpose was to menace us at home, and so limit the force which could be detached to America. Our answer was the formation of the Western Squadron. The command was given to Keppel under pressure of public opinion. This admiral was then the most distinguished survivor of the leaders of the Seven Years’ War. Lord Hawke, Boscawen, Pocock, and Saunders were dead or in retirement. Rodney, who was as yet comparatively unknown, had ruined himself by gambling and electioneering, and had taken refuge from his creditors in Paris, where he had accumulated a new load of debt. The character and position of Keppel had an important influence on the early stages of the war. He was by family connection a strong Whig. Burke, who loved him, has recorded in the “Letter to a Noble Lord,” that “though it was never shown in insult to any human being, Lord Keppel had something high. It was a wild stock of pride on which the tenderest of all hearts