In any such conflict, it is by the forces which can _suddenly be rendered available_ that everything will be determined. It may be quite true that England possesses resources in the vast extent of her mercantile navy and steam-vessels, and the undaunted character of her seamen, which, in any _prolonged_ contest, would give her the same superiority which she maintained throughout the last war; but it is not the less true, that this contingent ultimate superiority would be of no avail to avert disaster--it may be conquest--if the enemy, by having their forces better in hand, and available _in the outset_, were in a situation to gain an advantage which could never be recovered from in the commencement. It is impossible to overestimate the shock to credit, and ruin to the best interests of the empire, which would arise from a blockade of our harbours even for a single fortnight. Of what would it avail us that we had six noble sail of the line, and double that number of war-steamers in the Mediterranean, and as many scattered through the world, from China to California, if the Thames, the Mersey, and the Clyde, were blockaded by hostile fleets, and Portsmouth and Plymouth could only furnish five or six half-manned line-of-battle ships to raise the blockade? Russia has _no colonies_; France, next to none: thus the whole naval forces of both these Powers could be brought to bear, without deduction or defalcation of any sort, on Great Britain, more than half of whose navy is necessarily scattered over the globe. Our distant fleets would, in such a crisis, avail us as little as an army of pawns, with bishops and knights, would a chess-player who had received checkmate.