to your Excellency's
consideration, whether it would not be advisable for his Majesty to
interfere, by some declaration to the Court of London and to the
world, bearing the royal testimony against this barbarous mode of war,
and giving assurances, that he will join the United States in
retaliation, if Great Britain by putting her threats in execution
should make it necessary. There is another measure, however, more
effectual to control their designs, and to bring the war to a speedy
conclusion; that of sending a powerful fleet, sufficient to secure a
naval superiority over them in the American seas. Such a naval force,
acting in concert with the armies of the United States, would, in all
human probability, take and destroy the whole British power in that
part of the world. It would put their wealth and West Indian commerce
into the power of France, and reduce them to the necessity of suing
for peace. Upon their present naval superiority in those seas depend
not only the dominion and rich commerce of their islands, but the
supply of their fleets and armies with provisions and every necessary.
They have nearly four hundred transports constantly employed in the
service of their fleet and army in America, passing from New York and
Rhode Island to England, Ireland, Nova Scotia, and their West India
Islands, and if any one link in this chain was struck off, if their
supplies from any one of these places should be interrupted, their
forces could not subsist. Great numbers of these vessels would
necessarily fall into the hands of the French fleet, and go as prizes
to a sure market in the United States. Great numbers of seamen too
would become prisoners, a loss that England cannot repair. It is
conceived, that it would be impossible for Great Britain to send a
very great fleet after the French into those seas. Their men of war,
now in Europe, are too old, too rotten, too ill manned, and their
masts and yards are of too bad materials to endure such a navigation.
The impossibility of their obtaining provisions, artists and materials
in that country, which would be easy to the French, makes it still
clearer that they cannot send a great additional force, and the fear
of Spain's interfering, with her powerful navy, would restrain them.
Whereas France has nothing to fear in Europe from them, as the number
and excellence of their armies are an ample security against the
feeble land forces of Great Britain.

This naval superiority wo