three hundred miles in two or three hours, by telegraphs, are French inventions. And certainly the Governor does not mean the military art. If he does, I leave him to settle that matter with Buonaparte.

As to "manufactures," which makes another item of the Governor's encomiums, the case is, that every nation excels in some, and no nation excels in all. The French excel the English in every article of silk manufacture, and in the manufacture of superfine broad cloth. The broad cloth in France, called cloth of Lovain, is as much beyond an English superfine as an English superfine is beyond a second cloth. The French also excel in every article of glass manufacture, plateglass, window-glass, and hollow glass ware, and those articles are also cheaper in France than in England. The English excel the French in the cotton manufacture, but as the machinery for it, which was the invention of Richard Arkwright, an English Barber, is now made in France, and in other parts of Europe, the monopoly of that manufacture to England will

cease.

As to commerce, with which the Governor completes his climax of encomiums, it is difficult to say any thing about it. A state of war is not favourable to commerce or to manufactures that depend on exportation. England being an island, can have no foreign commerce but by sea, and she is now shut out from all the ports of the European continent. Whereas, France being situated on the continent, has the range of the continent by land. She can trade by land to Portugal, Spain, Italy, all Germany, Austria, Poland, Denmark, and, if she pleases, to Constantinople, without going to sea. The expense of this war has shown that navies are useless with respect to commerce. The English navy, great and expensive as it is, can do nothing to benefit the commerce of England. That navy is now a dead weight upon the nation.

If Governor Lewis wanted to fill up a paragraph in his speech about the condition of England, he might have done it much better than he has done.

Instead of far-fetched allusions and ill-founded encomiums, unwisely forced into notice, he might in speaking of England

have exhibited the melancholy spectacle of a nation ruining itself by wars, navies, and national debts, till every seventh person in that unfortunate country is a pauper.*

He might have expatiated on the dreadful effects of CORRUPTION, and produced the conduct of the British government as a warning of the danger. He might have held up the insolvency of the Bank of England as a memento against the fatal consequences of multiplying banks or increasing the quantity of bank paper. There is something rotten in the conditior of England, that ought to operate as a warning and not as an example.

Feb. 23, 1807.

AN OLD CITIZEN OF THE UNION.

The population of England consists of eight millions of souls. The number of paupers, according to an account given to Parliament twc years ago, was one million two hundred thousand!

OF GUN-BOATS.

A GUN-BOAT, carrying heavy metal, is a moveable fortification; and there is no mode or system of defence the United States can go into for coasts and harbours or ports, that will be so effectual as by gun-boats.

Ships of the line are no ways fitted for the defence of a coast. They are too bulky to act in narrow waters, and cannot act at all in shoal waters. Like a whale, they must be in deep water, and at a distance from land.

Frigates require less room to act in than ships of the line; but a frigate is a feeble machine compared with a gun-boat. Were a frigate to carry and discharge the same weight of metal and ball that a gun-boat can do, it would shake her to pieces. The timbered strength of every ship of war is in proportion to the weight of metal she is to carry, and the weight of metal she is to be exposed to. The sides of a frigate are not proof against the weight of a ball that a gun-boat can discharge, The difference between two ships of war is not so much in their number of guns as in their weight of metal.

I remember the late Commodore Johnson saying in the British House of Commons, at the commencement of the American war, that “a single gun, in a retired situation, would drive a ship of the line from her moorings. I mention this, (said he} that too much may not be expected from the navy."

A gun-boat can carry a gun of the same weight of metal and ball that a ship of an hundred guns can carry; and she carries it to the greatest possible advantage. The shot from a gunboat is a horizontal shot. The gun is fixed in a frame that slides in a groove, and when the man at the helm brings the head of the boat to point at the ship, the gun is pointed with it. When a ship fights with her starboard or larboard guns, she presents the whole broadside of the ship to the object she

fires at. A gun-boat fights only with her head, that is, with the gun at her head, and when she fires at an object, she presents only the breadth of the boat to that object. Suppose, then, a boat to be ten feet broad and two feet out of the water (I speak here of boats intended for the defence of the coast, and of towns situated near the coast, and to carry a gun of the same weight of metal and ball that a ship of the line carries,) such a boat will present a space to be fired at equal to twenty square feet, that is, ten feet horizontal length (being the breadth of the boat) and two feet perpendicular height, being the height of the boat out of the water. Suppose, on the other hand, that a ship be an hundred feet long and ten feet high out of the water, she will present a space to be fired at equal to one thousand square feet, that is, a hundred multiplied by ten, It is probable that a ship, in firing at a gun-boat, would fire one of her bow guns, because in so doing she apparently shortens about one half of her length; but she can fire but one gun at a time in this angular position,

But the gun-boat has other chances in her favour besides what arise from the different dimensions of the two objects, If a shot from the ship, though in a straight line with the boat, passes more than two feet above the water at the place where the boat is, it will pass over the boat without striking it. But a shot from the boat that is too high to strike the ship, may strike the mast and carry it way. It is by this means that masts are carried away, The shot that does it passes clear above the ship, and spends its whole force upon the mast, Again, if a shot from the ship pass an inch or two wide of the boat, it can do her no injury, But a shot from the boat that passes five or six inches wide of the body of the ship at the stern, may unship or carry away her rudder. This, and the carrying away a mast, are the two most fatal accidents that can befall a ship; yet neither of them can happen to a gun-boat,

Of the number of men killed or wounded in a ship, the greater part of them are not by cannon balls, but by splinters from the inside of the ship that fly in all directions; but the sides of a gun-boat not being thick like the sides of a ship, a ball would pass through without splinters; and as an effectual way to pre. vent splinters, should any happen or be apprehended, the sides

of the boat on the inside should be lined with a strong netting made of cord, which the men can make themselves. The cabins of French ships are frequently lined in this manner.

Musketry can be used by ship against ship in close action, but cannot be used against a gun-boat, because a gun-boat drawing but little water, not more than two and a half or three feet, and depending upon oars, can always keep out of the reach of musketry. The proper distance for a gun-boat to fire at is point blank shot. The men should be frequently exercised at firing point blank shot at banks of earth on shore, or against the high perpendicular shores of rivers, like the North River, or against the hulk of old ships that are to be broken up, the man at the helm to point the boat and give the order for firing. A gun-boat should not carry a less weight of ball than twentyfour pounds. A frigate would not choose to expose her sides to such shot.

The first gun-boats built in the United States, were for the defence of the Delaware, in 1775 and 1776. The Roebuck man of war came up the Delaware within a few miles of Philadelphia, and the gun-boats went and attacked her. The ship fired broadsides without striking any of the boats, and as the deep water the ship was in, was but narrow, the re-action of the broadsides forced her into shoal water, and she got aground. The man who commanded the gun-boats, a suspected character of the name of White, gave orders to the boats to cease firing, and when the tide rose the ship floated and made the best of her way to sea. White afterwards joined the British at NewYork.

When General Howe sailed from New-York, in 1777, to get possession of Philadelphia, he avoided coming up the Delaware, where the gun-boats were, and went to the Chesapeake, where there were none, and marched by land from the head of Elk into Pennsylvania. No cause can be assigned for this circuitous route of several hundred miles, but that of not exposing his ships and transports to the gun-boats. There were at that time a fortification on Mud Island, a few miles below Philadel

* Point blank musket shot is 250 yards, point blank cannon shot varies according to the size of the cannon.