depredations of the "Alabama" took it out of their hands. But if our merchant ships could be laid up in dock, our merchant seamen could not afford to starve, and they would naturally transfer their labour to the carrying neutral; and thus the services of our merchant seamen, the backbone and reserve of our military marine, would be permanently lost to this country, and our maritime power dried up at its source.
This destruction, therefore, of our carrying trade is not a mere commercial loss: not the mere destruction of one very important branch of British industry; but a blow struck at the very root of our national greatness.
Do the people of this country realize to the full what the destruction of England's maritime power really means ? We have, practically speaking, no standing army; our volunteers, brave and devoted as they are, could not stand up half an hour against a regular army; we have no chains of im-
