attend the contemplated 'descente en Angleterre ou en
Ireland,' and other hostile schemes recommended in the memoir."

That letter was forwarded to Lord Auckland from Halifax, where Lord
Dundonald then was, in the beginning of August. "Assuredly the reasons
which you give for the use of the means suggested are such as it is
difficult to controvert," wrote Lord Auckland on the 18th; "but I would
at least defer my assent or dissent to the time when the question may be
more pressing than it is at present." "I would postpone my own
reflections on the 'secret plans,'" he wrote again on the 1st of
September, "and would fain hope that events will allow the Government
long to postpone all decision upon them. I agree with you, however, in
much that you say upon their principle, and am well satisfied that to no
hands better than yours could the execution of any vigorous plans be
entrusted."

When, however, as will be seen on a latter page, an opportunity did
arise for enforcing those plans against another power than France, their
execution was not permitted to Lord Dundonald.

Strongly as he himself was impressed with their importance, they formed
only a part of a complete system of opinions respecting the defence of
England at which he arrived by close study and long experience. These
have already been partially indicated. He did not wish that his plans
should be lightly made use of; but, believing that they would ultimately
become a recognised means of warfare, and that even without them a great
revolution would soon take place in ways of fighting, he deprecated as
useless and wasteful the elaborate fortifications which were in his time
beginning to be extensively set up at Dover, Portsmouth, and other
possible points of attack upon England, and urged, with no less energy,
that vast improvements ought to be made in the construction and
employment of ships of war.

Fortifications, he considered, were only desirable for the protection of
the special ports and depots around which they were set up; and even for
that purpose they ought to be so compact as to need no more than a few
troops and local garrisons for their occupation. To have them so
complicated and numerous as to require the exclusive attention of all or
nearly all the military force of England, appeared to him only a source
of national weakness. His own achievements at Valdivia and elsewhere
showed him that skilful seamanship on the part of an invader would
render