But there is another aspect of Fulton, and this is exhibited by his enthusiastic biographer Cadwallader D. Colden. According to this gentleman, Fulton took no interest “in the then existing contest” between England and France. England and France were to him possible torpedo buyers and their fleets possible torpedo victims. But his ideals included universal free trade and the liberty of the seas, and he looked upon the annihilation of naval armaments as a step in the right direction, as it would destroy what he called the war system of Europe. If this could be effected nations would engage in education, science, and a rivalry of peaceful arts. Fulton has been called a prophet and a statesman; but the doctrine that warfare will be ended by elaborating a more deadly means of destruction than has hitherto been known, coupled with the implied assertion that each invention is the last word in destruction, suggests at once conspicuous limitations in prophecy and statecraft. He never thought of torpedo destroyers. In 1793 Fulton corresponded with Lord Stanhope on the subject of steam navigation. Lord Stanhope was fully aware that invention was knocking at the door, for in a letter to Wilberforce he says: “This country is vulnerable in so many ways, the picture is horrid.... I know, and in a few weeks I shall prove, that ships of any size may be navigated so as to go without wind and even directly against both wind and waves.... The most important consequence which I draw from this stupendous fact is this. It will shortly render all the navies of the world (I mean military navies) no better than lumber. For what can ships do that are dependent on wind and weather against fleets that are wholly independent of either? Therefore the boasted superiority of the British Navy is no more. We must have a new one. The French and other nations will for the same reasons have the same.” He was himself an experimenter, and had been endeavouring to propel a boat by means of an appliance resembling a mechanical duck’s foot. The plans which Fulton submitted to him show a boat with an immense bow or spring fastened to a stumpy mast amidships, operating on a large paddle for which the rail at the extreme end of a raking stern acted as a fulcrum; a second plan shows the boat with a three-paddle revolving wheel at the side.