INTRODUCTION.
NAVIGATION is of the first importance to the improvement and perfecting of the species, in spreading, by emigration, the superior varieties of man, and diffusing the arts and sciences over the world; in promoting industry, by facilitating the transfer of commodity through numberless channels from where it is not, to where it is required; and in healing the products of those most fertile but unwholesome portions of the earth, to others more congenial to the existence of the varieties of man susceptible of high improvement: Water being the general medium of action,—fluidity or conveyance by water, almost as necessary to civilized life as it is to organic life, in bearing the molecules forward in their vital courses, and in floating the pabulum (the raw material) from the soil through the living canals to the manufactories of assimilized matter, and thence to the points of adaptation. {2}
As civilization progresses under the influence of navigation, and the earth exchanges her straggling hordes of savages for enlightened densely-peopled nations, every climate and country will be more set apart to its appropriate production, and the utility of the great conduit, the OCEAN, will more and more be developed, and become the grand theatre of contested dominion—superiority there being almost synonymous with Universal Empire—dry land only the footstool of the Mistress of the Seas1.
In the still hour which has followed the cannon roar of our victories, we seem disposed to sleep secure, almost in forgetfulness, that we possess this superiority, that we stand forth the Champion of the World, and must give battle to every aspirant to the possession of the trident sceptre.
As soon as the recent principles of naval motion and new projectiles, conjoined to shot-proof vessels, shall have been brought to use in naval warfare, marine will have acquired a great comparative preponderance over land batteries, and every shore be still more at the mercy of the Lords of Ocean.
When we consider the tendency of luxurious peace, the effeminacy thence flowing in upon many of our wealthier population,—when we view, on the {3} one hand, an entailed aristocracy2, whose founders had been gradually thrown uppermost in more stirring times, the boldest and the wisest, but whose progeny, “in a calm world” entailed to listless satiety, have little left of hope or fear to awaken in them the dormant energies of their ancestors, or even to preserve these energies from entirely sinking; and, on the other hand, an overflowing population, chained, from the state of society, to incessant toil, the scope of their mental energies narrowed to a few objects from the division of labour, all tending to that mechanical order and tameness incompatible with liberty; thus, perhaps, equally in danger of deteriorating and sinking into caste, both classes yielding to the natural law of restricted adaptation to condition:—when we reflect on this, the conclusion is irresistibly forced upon us, that the periodical return of war is indispensable to the heroic chivalrous character and love of freedom which we have so long maintained, and which (Britain being the first in name and power in the family of nations) must be so influential on the morale of the civilized world. It is by the jar and struggle of the conflict that the baser alloy and rust of our manners and institutions must be removed and rubbed away: it is by the {4} ennobling excitement of danger and of hardship that our generous passions must be cherished, and our youth led to emulate the Roman in patriotic thirst for glory—the Spartan in devotion—their own ancestor, the more daring Scandinavian sea-king or rover3, in adventurous valour. Without, however, seeking the fight, yet in preparation for the perhaps not distant time, when we shall face another foe, it behoves us, without any sickly sentimentality, to cherish our warlike virtues—above all things to attend to what must constitute “the field of our fame,” Our MARINE, and the material of its construction, Naval Timber.