nformation, by the
statement of the First Lord of the Admiralty made in the House of
Lords in November, 1777, a very few months before the war with France
began. Replying to a complaint of the opposition as to the smallness
of the Channel fleet, he said:--

"We have now forty-two ships-of-the-line in commission in Great
Britain (without counting those on foreign service), thirty-five
of which are completely manned, and ready for sea at a moment's
warning.... I do not believe that either France or Spain
entertains any hostile disposition toward us; but from what I
have now submitted to you, I am authorized to affirm that our
navy is more than a match for that of the whole House of
Bourbon."[117]

It must, however, be said that this pleasing prospect was not realized
by Admiral Keppel when appointed to command in the following March,
and looking at his fleet with (to use his own apt expression) "a
seaman's eye;"[118] and in June he went to sea with only twenty ships.

It is plainly undesirable to insert in a narrative of this character
any account of the political questions which led to the separation of
the United States from the British Empire. It has already been
remarked that the separation followed upon a succession of blunders by
the English ministry,--not unnatural in view of the ideas generally
prevalent at that day as to the relations of colonies to the
mother-country. It needed a man of commanding genius to recognize, not
only the substantial justice of the American claims,--many did
that,--but also the military strength of their situation, as before
indicated. This lay in the distance of the colonies from home, their
nearness to each other independently of the command of the sea, the
character of the colonists,--mainly of English and Dutch stock,--and
the probable hostility of France and Spain. Unfortunately for England,
the men most able to cope with the situation were in the minority and
out of office.

It has been said before that, had the thirteen colonies been islands,
the sea power of Great Britain would have so completely isolated them
that their fall, one after the other, must have ensued. To this it may
be added that the narrowness of the strip then occupied by civilized
man, and the manner in which it was intersected by estuaries of the
sea and navigable rivers, practically reduced to the condition of
islands, so far as mutual support went, great sections of the
i