crease of the armour-plated vessels would lead to any diminution in the number of unarmoured ships.
Our commerce the special object of attack.The protection of commerce would certainly be a difficult task for our Navy in the event of war. The ablest officers in the French service have abandoned the idea of contending, to use the words of Baron Grivel, with the '20,000 guns of our fighting Navy.' Their aim would be to pursue the '50,000 merchant ships' which are continually engaged in transporting the wealth of England over the watery plain. They believe that the French fleet could carry on for an indefinite period a privateering war, and that the immediate result would be a rise in the rates of insurance and the transfer of the great carrying business of the sea from British ships to foreign flags. They assume that the great source of our national prosperity would thus be destroyed, and that a state of commercial and financial suffering would ensue, of which the sagacious and farseeing men who direct the government of England would soon grow weary.
The same policy would be adopted by the United States. They have hitherto declined to engage in a costly rivalry with the maritime powers of the Old World, by constructing the armoured ships, until lately regarded as indispensable to a fleet designed to engage an enemy in line of battle. Their views as to the kind of maritime operations they could undertake with the greatest prospect of success appear to coincide exactly with the plans propounded by Baron Grivel. In the Congressional Globe report of the proceedings