When Louis Napoleon completed that triumph of skill and labor, the port of Cherbourg, England trembled more than if he had launched fifty frigates.  And well she might.  For what is Cherbourg?  Nothing less than an immense permanent addition to the French power of naval production.  Here, protected from the sea by a breakwater miles in extent, and which might have been the work of the Titans, and girdled by almost impregnable fortifications, is more than a safe harbor for all the fleets of the world.  For here are docks for the repairs I dare not say of how many vessels, and ship-houses for the construction of one knows not how many more, and work-shops and arsenals and stores of timber and iron well-nigh inexhaustible.  This is to have more than a hundred ships.  This is to create productive capacity out of which may come many hundred ships, when they are wanted.  The faith men have in the maritime greatness of England rests not simply on the fact that she has afloat a few hundred frail ships, but rather on this more pregnant fact, that England, from Pentland Frith to Land’s End, is one gigantic work-shop,—­and that, whether she turn her attention to the clothing of the world or the building of navies, there is no outmeasuring her mechanical activity.  The world has called us a weak naval power.  But the world has been mistaken.  We are strong almost as the strongest, if not in fleets, then in the capacity to produce fleets.  Three hundred armed vessels, extemporized in eighteen months, and maintaining what, considering the extent of coast to be watched, must be called a most efficient blockade, will stand as an impressive evidence that capacity to produce is one of the best of nautical gifts.

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But passing from these questions, which relate to what may be called a nation’s innate character and capacity, we come to a third consideration, of perhaps even more immediate interest.  One of the elements which help to make a nation’s power is certainly its available strength.  An important question, then, is, not only, How many ships can a nation produce? but, How many has it complete and ready for use?  In an emergency, what force could it send at a moment’s notice to the point of danger?  If we apply this consideration to European powers, we shall appreciate better how young we are, and how little of our latent strength has been organized into actual efficiency.  In 1857 England had 300 steam ships-of-war, carrying some 7,000 guns, nearly as many more sailing ships, carrying 9,000 guns, an equal number of gun-boats and smaller craft, besides a respectable navy connected with her East Indian colonies:  a grand sum-total of more than 900 vessels and not less than 20,000 guns.  Here, then, is a fleet, built and ready for service, which is many times stronger than that which we have been able to gather after eighteen months of constant and strenuous effort.  And behind this array there is a community essentially