In point of safety, ought we to be without a fleet?  We are not the little people now, which we were sixty years ago; at that time we might have trusted our property in the streets, or fields rather; and slept securely without locks or bolts to our doors or windows.  The case now is altered, and our methods of defense ought to improve with our increase of property.  A common pirate, twelve months ago, might have come up the Delaware, and laid the city of Philadelphia under instant contribution, for what sum he pleased; and the same might have happened to other places.  Nay, any daring fellow, in a brig of fourteen or sixteen guns might have robbed the whole continent, and carried off half a million of money.  These are circumstances which demand our attention, and point out the necessity of naval protection.

Some, perhaps, will say, that after we have made it up with Britain, she will protect us.  Can we be so unwise as to mean, that she shall keep a navy in our harbours for that purpose?  Common sense will tell us, that the power which hath endeavoured to subdue us, is of all others the most improper to defend us.  Conquest may be effected under the pretence of friendship; and ourselves after a long and brave resistance, be at last cheated into slavery.  And if her ships are not to be admitted into our harbours, I would ask, how is she to protect us?  A navy three or four thousand miles off can be of little use, and on sudden emergencies, none at all.  Wherefore, if we must hereafter protect ourselves, why not do it for ourselves?

The English list of ships of war, is long and formidable, but not a tenth part of them are at any one time fit for service, numbers of them not in being; yet their names are pompously continued in the list, if only a plank be left of the ship:  and not a fifth part of such as are fit for service, can be spared on any one station at one time.  The East and West Indies, Mediterranean, Africa, and other parts over which Britain extends her claim, make large demands upon her navy.  From a mixture of prejudice and inattention, we have contracted a false notion respecting the navy of England, and have talked as if we should have the whole of it to encounter at once, and for that reason, supposed, that we must have one as large; which not being instantly practicable, have been made use of by a set of disguised Tories to discourage our beginning thereon.  Nothing can be farther from truth than this; for if America had only a twentieth part of the naval force of Britain, she would be by far an overmatch for her; because, as we neither have, nor claim any foreign dominion, our whole force would be employed on our own coast, where we should, in the long run, have two to one the advantage of those who had three or four thousand miles to sail over, before they could attack us, and the same distance to return in order to refit and recruit.  And although Britain, by her fleet, hath a check over our trade to Europe, we have as large a one over her trade to the West Indies, which, by laying in the neighbourhood of the continent, is entirely at its mercy.