When the Postmaster General and the other high officials cast their eyes around to discover what prospects there were of satisfying this very natural desire, they could not fail to discern that in the near future they were likely to fare worse than in the past. The hopes of peace raised by Lord Malmesbury’s negotiations in the autumn of 1796 had been disappointed. Even the Packet told off to convey despatches from the ambassador, having been driven ashore near Calais by a violent storm, was seized by the French and condemned as lawful prize, notwithstanding the full explanations which were rendered by her commander and by the British Government. The number of Privateers which were reported week by week to be issuing from St. Malo, Nantes, Bordeaux, and a hundred other ports was absolutely without precedent. Between 20° and 30° W. long. there were, as the officers of a Nantes Privateer informed some Packetsmen whom they had captured, no less than forty vessels like herself cruising with the sole object of preying on British commerce, and through this belt of enemies every West India Packet must pass. Many of these wolves of the ocean were hardly less powerful than frigates; and the smallest of them was an overmatch for any Packet in every point save that of individual courage and resource. Moreover, when the war broke out it had been a duel between England and France alone, and the enmity of Holland on the north and Spain on the south somewhat limited the French powers of offence. Of whatever value this advantage might have been it was now lost; and the three powers henceforward presented a united front to England. The Privateers of any one could shelter, refit, or dispose of prizes in the ports of any other; and while this circumstance gave them an added strength in European waters, the case was even worse in the West Indies, where the French gained lurking places in every creek of the Spanish islands, and were enabled to lie in ambush for British commerce at numberless points where our ships were used to think themselves in safety. It was easier by far to discern these facts of evil augury than to discover any remedy. They were still being pondered in Lombard Street when the merchants opened their attack and lodged a memorial in Downing Street in which they complained in the strongest terms of the failure of the Post-Office to protect their correspondence. Scarcely had this memorial been received when the loss within one month of three West India Packets stamped it with an urgency which even its promoters had not foreseen, and raised the subject immediately from one chiefly affecting a single class to a grave matter of national concern.