and this will be the measure of your sacrifice during the war, not to speak of your chance of losing it altogether; for it by no means follows that once lost your carrying trade will return to you after the peace. Commerce has a tendency, once it has taken certain lines and channels, to adhere to them, as witness the permanent loss to the Americans of their carrying trade, caused by the depredations of the "Alabama," the "Florida" and the "Shenandoah." As you have taken a fatal step in signing the Declaration of Paris, take another step which will land you in comparative safety.
I think I have stated fairly the arguments of the exponents of this theory. I will begin by granting all they contend for, and I will ask, does it not amount to this: "There shall be no more war upon the sea, where we have always been strong, but only on land where we must be necessarily weak;" for the moment such a principle is granted there can be no more such a
