If the Navigation Laws were done away, Admiral Martin believed, the shipowner who would go to foreign countries for cheap ships would, from the same motive, take foreign seamen, such as Danes, Swedes, Norwegians, or Dutchmen, who would be content with small wages and a cheap scale of dietary. In this way, a large number of British seamen would be deprived of the employment they now enjoyed owing mainly to the Navigation Laws; and, in such a case, the naval service must suffer in proportion, especially, when, in time of war, seamen are most urgently required. It had been said, and it was a “marvellous assertion,” that the merchant service contributes so little towards the supply of the navy—that, so far as concerned this point, there need be no hesitation in abandoning the Navigation Laws. An assertion more completely contradicted by all experience, Admiral Martin confidently stated, had never been uttered. The merchant service, he held, was everything to the navy, while the navy, he was convinced, could not exist without it. He was unable, adequately, to express his surprise at these loose assertions, for every person who remembered the muster of the navy immediately preceding the war in 1793, could not fail to know that the glorious victory of the 1st of June, 1794, under Lord Howe, was gained by the merchant seamen of the kingdom. We had not then, he said, 20,000 men, and these were scattered over the globe when the war broke out; it was, therefore, the merchant service that enabled us rapidly to man some sixty sail of the line, and double that number of frigates and smaller vessels. By promptly bringing together about 35,000 or 40,000 seamen of the mercantile marine, Admiral Gardner was able at once to proceed to the West Indies with seven sail of the line, nine frigates and sloops of war; Lord Hood to man twenty-two sail of the line, and a large number of frigates and sloops, with which he occupied Toulon and took Corsica; while, by its aid, other squadrons were sent to America and to the East Indies to protect our interests in those quarters. The command of seamen from the merchant service also enabled Lord Howe to occupy the Channel with twenty-seven sail of the line and numerous frigates, thereby affording security to our own homes, and the means of protecting our colonies and commerce by detached squadrons. [Sidenote: Working of the system of apprenticeship,]