Hanging in a frame on the walls of the Musée de Marine at the Louvre the English visitor to Paris to-day may see a draft original “State,” giving the official details of the divisions and brigades and the ships to escort them, of one of the French armies which was to be thrown across into England. It was no empty menace, and for three years the beacons along our south and east coasts had to be watched nightly; while camps of soldiers, horse and foot and artillery—the few regulars that had not been sent off to America—with all the militia regiments in the kingdom, extended all the way round, at points, from Caithness to Cornwall. To safeguard London there were camps of from eight to ten battalions each, mostly militia, at Coxheath, near Maidstone, at Dartford, at Warley, at Danbury in Essex, and at Tiptree Heath. To secure the colliery shipping of the Tyne two militia battalions were under canvas near Gateshead. A camp at Dunbar and Haddington watched over Edinburgh. The West Country was guarded by a big camp of fifteen militia battalions at Roborough, near Plymouth, with an outlying camp on Buckland Down, near Tavistock. To prevent the enemy making use of Torbay, Berry Head was fortified, the ruins of the old Roman camp of Vespasian’s legionaries there being utilized to build two twenty-four pounder batteries overlooking the passage into the bay. Every town almost throughout England had its “Armed Association” or “Fencibles,” volunteers, the men of which, by special permission from the Archbishop of Canterbury, drilled after church time every Sunday. The effect on the oversea commerce of the country, penalized by excessive insurance rates, was calamitous. From 25 to 30 per cent premium was paid at Lloyds on cargoes from Bristol, Liverpool, and Glasgow to New York (still in British hands); and 20 per cent to the West Indies. As to the reality of the risk. On one occasion the enemy captured an Indiaman fleet bodily off Madeira, only eight vessels out of sixty-three escaping, with a loss to Great Britain of a million and a half sterling, including £300,000 in specie. We have, indeed, at this moment a daily reminder of the disaster. One of the unfortunate underwriters was a Mr. John Walter. His whole fortune swept away, he took to journalism, and the _Times_ newspaper was the result. Home waters were hardly more secure. Rather than pay the excessive extra premium demanded for the voyage up Channel, London merchants had their goods unladen at Bristol, and carried in light flat-bottomed craft called “runners,” built specially for the traffic, up the Severn to Gloucester, thence to be carted across to Lechlade for conveyance to their destination by barge down the Thames. At the same time the North Sea packets from Edinburgh (Grangemouth) to London refused all passengers who would not undertake to assist in the defence of the vessel in emergency. Printed notices were pasted up at the wharves announcing that no Quakers would be carried.