I have heard the want of success in maritime exploits,
among the French, attributed to a want of sympathy, in the nation,
with maritime things. Others, again, have supposed that the narrow
system of preferring birth to merit, which pervaded the whole economy
of the French marine, as well as of its army, previously to the
revolution, could not fail to destroy the former, inasmuch as a man of
family would not consent to undergo the toil and hardships that are
unavoidable to the training of the true seaman. This last reason,
however, can scarcely be the true one, as the young English noble has
often made the most successful naval officer; and the marine of
France, in 1798, had surely every opportunity of perfecting itself, by
downright practice, uninjured by favouritism, as that of America. For
myself, though I have now reflected on the subject for years, I can
come to no other conclusion than that national character has some very
important agency--or, perhaps, it might be safer to say, _has_
had some very important agency--through some cause or other, in
disqualifying France from becoming a great naval power, in the sense
of skill; in that of mere force, so great a nation must always be
formidable. Now she sends her princes to sea, however, we may look for
different results.
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