ures of the commander-in-chief,
if they desired to replace the interminable uncertainties and anxieties
of the last administration of the fleet by a sense of security, and
consequent popular content.

St. Vincent's institution and maintenance of the Brest blockade must be
regarded under two principal heads. There is, first, the usefulness of
the blockade as an instrument to the general ends of the current war,
which is the strategic point of view, involving a conception permanent
in character; and there are again the local dispositions, arising from
the local conditions, that may rightly be styled tactical, and vary from
port to port thus watched. The former, the strategic, was more directly
in line with his natural gifts; and in the possession which the idea
took of him is to be found the germ of the system that thenceforward
began to throttle the power of the French Revolution, whether under the
Republic or the Empire. The essence of the scheme was to cut loose from
the beach, and keep to the sea; ever watchful, with the same
watchfulness that had not only crushed mutiny, but by diligent care
forestalled occasions of revolt. "Our great reliance," he said,--not
directly in reference to the blockade, but to the general thought of
which the blockade, as instituted by him, was the most illustrious
exemplification,--"is on the vigilance and activity of our cruisers at
sea, any reduction in the number of which, by applying them to guard our
ports, inlets, and beaches, would in my judgment tend to our
destruction." Amplified as the idea was by him, when head of the
Admiralty, to cover not only Brest but all ports where hostile divisions
lay, it became a strategic plan of wide sweep, which crushed the
vitality of the hostile navies, isolated France from all support by
commerce, and fatally sapped her strength. To St. Vincent, more than to
any one man, is due the effective enforcement and maintenance of this
system; and in this sense, as practically the originator of a decisive
method, he is fairly and fully entitled to be considered the organizer
of ultimate victory.

The local dispositions before Brest will not here be analyzed.[14]
Suffice it to say that, as revealed in Jervis's correspondence, they
show that equipment of general professional knowledge, that careful
study of conditions,--of what corresponds to "the ground" of a shore
battle-field,--and the thoughtful prevision of possibilities, which
constitute so far the