ready to admit all that could be expected. The American naval officers certainly form a strong contrast to the majority of their countrymen, and prove, by their enlightened and liberal ideas, how much the Americans, in general, would be improved if they enjoyed the same means of comparison with other countries which the naval officers, by their profession, have obtained. Their partial successes during the late war were often the theme of discourse, which was conducted with candour and frankness on both sides. No unpleasant feeling was ever excited by any argument with them on the subject, whilst the question, raised amongst their "free and enlightened" brother citizens, who knew nothing of the matter, was certain to bring down upon me such a torrent of bombast, falsehood, and ignorance, as required all my philosophy to submit to with apparent indifference. But I must now take my leave of the American navy, and notice their merchant marine.

Before I went to the United States I was

aware that a large proportion of our seamen were in their employ. I knew that the whole line of packets, which is very extensive, was manned by British seamen; but it was not until I arrived in the States that I discovered the real state of the case.

During my occasional residence at New York, I was surprised to find myself so constantly called upon by English seamen, who had served under me in the different ships I had commanded since the Peace. Every day seven or eight would come, touch their hats, and remind me in what ships, and in what capacity, they had done their duty. I had frequent conversations with them, and soon discovered that their own expression, "We are all here, sir," was strictly true. To the why and the wherefore, the answer was invariably the same—" Eighteen dollars a month, sir." Some of them, I recollect, told me that they were going down to New Orleans, because the sickly season was coming on; and that during the time the yellow fever raged they always had a great advance of wages, receiving sometimes as much

as thirty dollars per month. I did not attempt to dissuade them from their purpose; they were just as right to risk their lives from contagion at thirty dollars a month, as to stand and be fired at at a shilling a day. The circumstance of so many of my own men being in American ships, and their assertion that there were no other sailors than English at New York, induced me to enter very minutely into my investigation, of which the following are the results :—

The United States, correctly speaking, have no common seamen, or seamen bred up as apprentices before the mast. Indeed a little reflection will show how unlikely it is that they ever should have; for who would submit to such a dog's life (as at the best it is), or what parent would consent that his children should wear out an existence of hardship and dependence at sea, when he could so easily render them independent on shore? The same period of time requisite for a man to learn his duty as an able seaman, and be qualified for the pittance of eighteen dollars per month, would be sufficient

to establish a young man as an independent, or even wealthy, landowner, factor, or merchant. That there are classes in America who do go to sea is certain, and who and what these are I shall hereafter point out; but it may be positively asserted that, unless by escaping from their parents at an early age, and before their education is complete, they become, as it were, lost, there is in the United States of America hardly an instance of a white boy being sent to sea, to be brought up as a foremast man.

It may be here observed that there is a wide difference in the appearance of an English seaman and a portion of those styling themselves American seamen, who are to be seen at Liverpool and other seaports; tall, weedy, narrowshouldered, slovenly, yet still athletic men, with their knives worn in a sheath outside of their clothes, and not with a lanyard round them, as is the usual custom of English seamen. There is, I grant, a great difference in their appearance, and it arises from the circumstance of those men having been continually in the trade to

New Orleans and the South, where they have picked up the buccaneer airs and customs which are still in existence there; but the fact is, that, though altered also by climate, the majority of them were Englishmen born, who served their first apprenticeship in the coasting trade, but left it at an early age for America. They may be considered as a portion of the emigrants to America, having become in feeling, as well as in other respects, bonâ fide Americans.

The whole amount of tonnage of the American mercantile marine may be taken, in round numbers, at 2,000,000 tons, which may be subdivided as follows: