Whether Selden’s assertion, that “we have an hereditary uninterrupted right to the sovereignty of our seas, conveyed to us from our earliest ancestors, in trust for our latest posterity,” be perfectly deducible either from the nature of things, or from the authority of history, I shall not stay to enquire. But I will venture to affirm, that when we suffer this right, however acquired, to depart from us, the sun of England may be truly said to be set for ever. When the question of the relative naval strength of the two nations is agitated, which it often is, I am tempted to cry out to my country, in the words of the Grecian oracle,----“Trust to your wooden walls.”----I am the more confirmed in this opinion, from reading every day in the _bulletins_ of the astonishing successes of this people, both in the Pyrenees, and on the frontier of Holland. They openly boast of being able, in a short time, to penetrate to Madrid; to force the German powers to peace; and to totally subdue the Dutch.----And then “_Delenda est Carthago_.” I accuse not those with whom I converse of using this, or any other Latin phrase; but you will smile on being told that they habitually call us Carthaginians, and themselves Romans. They pay us, however, the compliment of declaring, that we are the only enemies worth combating. They stigmatize the Spaniards as cowards: at German tactics, when opposed to the energy and enthusiasm of republicans, they laugh: Dutch apathy can alarm no one. But this respect is confined to our naval character. Our impotent interference and puny attempts on the Continent they treat only with ridicule and derision. This spirit is not new: A noble lord, now high in rank in the British army, told me nearly twenty years ago, when we were on service together in America, that when he was very young, and travelling in France, a general officer, on hearing him relate that he was designed for the army, expressed his surprize that any Englishman, to whom the choice was left, should hesitate to prefer entering into the navy. Are the scorn and contempt of our enemies necessary to teach us in what our true grandeur, our real national pre-eminence, consists? It is certain that at present we far surpass them in the number of our ships, in the dexterity of our seamen, and in the interior regulations of our service; but I am persuaded, that they will hereafter strain every nerve to equal and exceed us. I know, that by very high authority the naval power of France has been denominated “forced and unnatural;” but let those who apply to it epithets so devoid of knowledge and reflection, remember the short period in which Louis XIV. created this navy, and its resurrection in 1778, when, to the astonishment of all Europe, notwithstanding its wasted and disastrous condition but fifteen years before, it suddenly started up, singly, to contest the empire of the sea with Britain, and for four years (until the 12th of April 1782) poised the scale of victory against its