red and
fifty thousand men at all conversant with the sea; while England has,
including boatmen, fishermen, coasters, and sailors of long voyages, the
enormous number of eight hundred thousand. Remove this disproportion and
you settle the whole question. Unfortunately, this is a matter in which
government can do but little, while national tastes and habits do
everything. No despotism can make a commercial marine where no
commercial spirit is. And no voice, charm it ever so wisely, can draw
the peasant of France from his vine-clad hills and plains. The French
rulers have done what they could. They have fostered, with a steady and
liberal hand, the fisheries. Every spring, twenty thousand men have set
sail to that best nursery of seamanship,--the Banks of Newfoundland.
These men are paid a bounty by Government, and, in return, are subjected
to a naval discipline, and, upon an emergency, are liable at a moment's
notice to enter into the naval service. To quicken mercantile
enterprise, by which alone mariners can be called into existence,
enormous subsidies have been paid to the great lines of steamers to
Brazil and the East. And the yearning for colonies, which in our day has
led to almost simultaneous attempts to found settlements in both
hemispheres and in all waters, has no doubt for a leading cause the
desire to build up a mercantile marine, and with it a numerous body of
expert seamen. If these efforts have not accomplished all that their
projectors could wish, it is not because their plans lacked sagacity,
but because it is hard to put the genius of the sea into the breasts of
men who are essentially landsmen.

To increase the number of French sailors would unquestionably be the
best possible method of adding to French naval power. But suppose that
this cannot be done. Supposes that there is in the heart of the French
people an invincible attachment to the soil, which makes them deaf to
every siren of the sea. What is the next counsel of wisdom? This, is it
not? To make what sailors you have efficient and available for naval
emergencies. In this respect the French authorities have achieved an
entire success. Every sailor, nay, every man whose employment savors at
all of maritime life, though he be only a boatman plying the river, or a
laborer in harbor or dock, is enrolled in what is called the marine
inscription,--thenceforward in all times of need to be called into
active service. This puts the whole seafaring popu