their desperate attempt to turn the course of the war from a channel in which it was sure to be successful, into one in which it was sure to be disastrous; to throw the game knowingly and wilfully into the enemy’s hands, and ruin us in our allies. They seemed to anticipate with fatal apprehension the most splendid success that ever adorned the annals of the British navy, and to be determined by an inverted ambition to match it with a pattern, in their own style, of equal horror, discomfiture, and dismay. They seemed to conspire maliciously with fortune, in depriving Englishmen of the pure, unalloyed triumph of that day.—For the present, the errors of the cabinet have entirely defeated whatever advantages we might have derived from our naval success; and the effect of our mistaken policy has been, that while we remain undisputed masters of the seas, and are grasping at the commerce of the world, we see the ports of Europe about to be shut against us. War on the continent is therefore hopeless; war at sea useless, or worse than useless: for methinks there is neither policy nor wisdom nor humanity ‘in resolving to set no limits to your hostility but with your existence,’ when you have to contend with a great and formidable foe; when you only know that _he_ is safe from your attacks; when you can only distress him, when you gain no advantage yourself in the mean time, and cannot possibly gain any that can be put in competition with such an alternative; when we consider that such a resolution (however heroically it may be formed) cannot be always persisted in (for the desire of peace is natural, and war revolting to the human mind); that the longer it is adhered to, the more mischievous it will become, and the more dangerous in its consequences afterwards, and will render the diminution of that maritime preponderance, which we have held with such a convulsive grasp, more and more an object both of policy and revenge to other powers.