quent descents on the French coast. The War of the American
Revolution affords no lesson, the fleets being nearly equal. The next
most striking instance to Americans is the War of 1812. Everybody
knows how our privateers swarmed over the seas, and that from the
smallness of our navy the war was essentially, indeed solely, a
cruising war. Except upon the lakes, it is doubtful if more than two
of our ships at any time acted together. The injury done to English
commerce, thus unexpectedly attacked by a distant foe which had been
undervalued, may be fully conceded; but on the one hand, the American
cruisers were powerfully supported by the French fleet, which being
assembled in larger or smaller bodies in the many ports under the
emperor's control from Antwerp to Venice, tied the fleets of England
to blockade duty; and on the other hand, when the fall of the emperor
released them, our coasts were insulted in every direction, the
Chesapeake entered and controlled, its shores wasted, the Potomac
ascended, and Washington burned. The Northern frontier was kept in a
state of alarm, though there squadrons, absolutely weak but relatively
strong, sustained the general defence; while in the South the
Mississippi was entered unopposed, and New Orleans barely saved. When
negotiations for peace were opened, the bearing of the English toward
the American envoys was not that of men who felt their country to be
threatened with an unbearable evil. The late Civil War, with the
cruises of the "Alabama" and "Sumter" and their consorts, revived the
tradition of commerce-destroying. In so far as this is one means to a
general end, and is based upon a navy otherwise powerful, it is well;
but we need not expect to see the feats of those ships repeated in the
face of a great sea power. In the first place, those cruises were
powerfully supported by the determination of the United States to
blockade, not only the chief centres of Southern trade, but every
inlet of the coast, thus leaving few ships available for pursuit; in
the second place, had there been ten of those cruisers where there was
one, they would not have stopped the incursion in Southern waters of
the Union fleet, which penetrated to every point accessible from the
sea; and in the third place, the undeniable injury, direct and
indirect, inflicted upon individuals and upon one branch of the
nation's industry (and how high that shipping industry stands in the
writer's estimation need not b