ith a great maritime power,
your ship where she would be most wanted, in the East Indies, and close
against her the ports of the civilized world, and the sooner she takes out
her propeller, and sends up her masts higher, and spreads her wings wider,
the better for her. That is, under such circumstances, modern improvements
would be worse than useless; a sailing ship would be the best possible
ship. Or come nearer home. Here is the Alabama, swift as the wind, the
dread of every loyal merchantman. How long would she remain a thing of
terror, if she were shut out from all ports but her own, or if our ships
were permitted to frequent British and French ports for her destruction,
as she is permitted to frequent them for our destruction? Or consider
another case equally pertinent. We are told, and no doubt truly, that the
loss of Norfolk, at the commencement of the war, was an incalculable
injury to us. That is to say, the removal of our place of naval supply and
repair only the few hundred miles which divide the Chesapeake from the
Hudson was an untold loss. Suppose it were removed as many thousand miles,
what then? One single fact, showing what, under the best of circumstances,
is the difficulty and expense of modern warfare, is worth a thousand
theories. In 1857, then, it took two hundred thousand tons of coal to
supply that part of the English fleet which was in the East,--two hundred
thousand tons to be brought from somewhere in sailing ships. If ever a
contest shall arise among great commercial powers, it will be seen that
modern science has made new conditions, and that the first inexorable
demand of modern warfare is coal depots, and docks and machine-shops,
established in ports easy of access, and protected by natural and
artificial strength, and scattered at easy distances all over the
commercial world. In short, men will appreciate better than they do now,
that the right arm of naval warfare is not mail-clad steamers, but
well-chosen colonies.

* * * * *

The sagacity of England was never more clearly shown than in the foresight
with which she has provided against such an emergency. Let war come when
it may, it will not find England in this respect unprepared. So thickly
are her colonies scattered over the face of the earth, that her war-ships
can go to every commercial centre on the globe without spreading so much
as a foot of canvas to the breeze.

There is the Mediterranean Sea.