Notwithstanding the active measures which were thus taken by Sir George Prevost to maintain our ascendancy upon the Lakes, the Quarterly Reviewer has thought proper to observe, that it is perfectly inconceivable how any man, in Sir George Prevost's situation, could have been so infatuated, as to disregard the importance of maintaining his superiority. The gross injustice of this charge will be best proved by citing the words of Sir George Prevost himself, in a letter of the 3rd February, 1813, addressed to General Sheaffe. "The extreme anxiety I experienced respecting the naval force to be employed on Lake Ontario, in the spring of this year, has rendered the proceedings in the dock-yards at Kingston and York, subjects highly interesting to me. You may therefore suppose I shall expect to find the exertions at both these places to have fully corresponded with the magnitude of the object and the difficulties surmounted in forwarding from hence the numerous supplies required for that service." Much has been said by the Reviewer upon the incompetency of the person commanding, and of the other officers belonging to our Provincial marine on Lake Ontario.[38] Whatever might have been the want of energy and enterprise on the part of Earle, in the instance to which the critic has alluded, and the circumstances of which he has greatly exaggerated, Sir George Prevost did not think it incumbent upon him, on that account, to deprive himself of the services of that officer, who was acknowledged to be a tried and skilful navigator of the Lake, at a period when those services were particularly required for the transport of the various supplies destined for the upper parts of the Province. He was, therefore, retained in the command, not only as being highly useful for the purposes for which he was wanted, but because no person could then be found adequate to supply his place. That the captain of the Tartarus sloop of war, then at Quebec, needed but a hint from Sir George Prevost[39] to proceed with his crew to Lake Ontario, and supersede Earle and his feeble followers, may well be doubted, when we consider the state of the squadron to which he belonged, and the services required from it at the commencement of the war. Whether such a plan was beyond Sir George's _capacity_,[40] may be left for the reader to determine. Had he, however, adopted it, he would certainly have evinced a great want of consistency and judgment. He was, at that period, in the act of negociating with General Dearborn for the armistice, which afterwards took place, with the reasonable expectation that the revocation of the Orders in Council would lead to a return of peace between Great Britain and America. Our force at that time on Lake Ontario was so decidedly superior, not only to what the enemy possessed on those waters, but to any which they could hope for several months to fit out, that an addition, either to its amount or efficiency, seemed to be uncalled for and unnecessary.