The naval combats of the American war had a remarkable result. They formed a preparation for the still more desperate combats of the French naval war. They trained the English officers to effective discipline; they accustomed the English sailors to victory, and the French to defeat; and the consequence was, a succession of English triumphs and French defeats in the war of 1793, to which history affords no parallel. The French republican declaration of war was issued on the memorable first of February 1793. Orders were instantly sent to the ports for the fleet to put to sea. Such was its high state of preparation, that almost immediately fifty-four sail of the line, and a hundred and forty-six smaller vessels, were ready for sea. The republican activity of France had already determined on contending for naval empire; and a fleet of eighty-two sail of the line were under orders, besides nearly as many more on the stocks. But all was unavailing. The defeats suffered in the ten years previous to the peace of Amiens in 1803, stripped France of no less than thirty-two ships of the line captured, and eleven destroyed; and her allies, Holland, Spain, and Denmark, of twenty-six of the line, with five hundred and nineteen smaller ships of war taken or destroyed, besides eight hundred and seven French privateers also taken or destroyed. The French had become builders for the English. Of their ships of the line fifty were added to the English navy. On the recommencement of the war in 1804, the British fleet numbered nearly double that of the enemy; but the French ships were generally larger and finer vessels. It is difficult to understand from what circumstance the French, and even the Americans, seem always to have the superiority in ship-building. Our mechanical skill seems always to desert us in the dockyard. During the war, our naval armament continued to increase from year to year, until, in 1810, it had reached the prodigious number of five hundred pennants, of which one hundred were of the line, with one hundred and forty-five thousand seamen and marines!