Xenophon observes,[365] that if the Athenians, together with the sovereignty of the seas, had enjoyed the advantageous situation of an island, they might with great ease have given law to their neighbours. For the same fleets which enabled them to ravage the seacoasts of the continent at discretion, could equally have protected their own country from the insults of their enemies as long as they maintained their naval superiority. One would imagine, says the great Montesquieu,[366] that Xenophon in this passage was speaking of the island of Britain. The judicious and glorious exertion of our naval force under the present ministry, so strongly confirms Xenophon’s remark, that one would imagine their measures were directed, as well as dictated, by his consummate genius. We are masters both of those natural and acquired advantages, which Xenophon required to make his countrymen invincible. We daily feel their importance more and more, and must be sensible that our liberty, our happiness, and our very existence as a people, depend upon our naval superiority supported by our military virtue and publick spirit. Nothing, humanly speaking, but luxury, effeminacy and corruption, can ever deprive us of this envied superiority. What an accumulated load of guilt therefore must lie upon any future administration, who, to serve the ends of faction, should ever precipitate Britain from her present height down to the abject state of Athens, by encouraging those evils to blast all publick virtue in their unlimited progress.