rneur Morris saw and
preached, that in the complicated tangle of warring interests which
constitutes every contemporary situation, the influence of any single
factor depends, not merely upon its own value, but upon that value
taken in connection with other conditions. A pound is but a pound; but
when the balance is nearly equal, a pound may turn a scale. Because
America could not possibly put afloat the hundred--or two
hundred--ships-of-the-line which Great Britain had in commission,
therefore, many argued, as many do to-day, it was vain to have any
navy. "I believe," wrote Morris in 1794,[77] and few men better
understood financial conditions, "that we could now maintain twelve
ships-of-the-line, perhaps twenty, with a due proportion of frigates
and smaller vessels. And I am tolerably certain that, while the United
States of America pursue a just and liberal conduct, _with twenty
sail-of-the-line at sea_, no nation on earth will dare to insult them.
I believe also, that, not to mention individual losses, five years of
war would involve more national expense than the support of a navy for
twenty years. One thing I am thoroughly convinced of, that, if we do
not render ourselves respectable, we shall continue to be insulted."

A singular, and too much disregarded, instance of the insults to which
the United States was exposed, by the absence of naval strength, is
found in the action of the Barbary Powers towards our commerce, which
scarcely dared to enter the Mediterranean. It is less known that this
condition of things was eminently satisfactory to British politicians
of the old-fashioned school, and as closely linked as was the
Navigation system itself to the ancient rivalry with Holland. "Our
ships," wrote the Dutch statesman De Witt, who died in 1672, "should
be well guarded by convoy against the Barbary pirates. Yet it would by
no means be proper to free that sea of those pirates, because we
should hereby be put upon the same footing with East-landers, [_i.e._,
Baltic nations, Denmark, Sweden, etc.] English, Spaniards, and
Italians; wherefore it is best to leave that thorn in the sides of
those nations, whereby they will be distressed in that trade, while we
by convoy engross all the European traffic and navigation."[78] This
cynical philosophy was echoed in 1784 by the cultured English
statesman, Lord Sheffield, the intimate friend of the historian
Gibbon, and editor of his memoirs. "If the great maritime powers kno