proper, in framing our policy, to consider the jealousies of the
European family of states, and their consequent unwillingness to incur
the enmity of a people so strong as ourselves; their dread of our
revenge in the future, as well as their inability to detach more than a
certain part of their forces to our shores without losing much of their
own weight in the councils of Europe. In truth, a careful determination
of the force that Great Britain or France could probably spare for
operations against our coasts, if the latter were suitably defended,
without weakening their European position or unduly exposing their
colonies and commerce, is the starting-point from which to calculate
the strength of our own navy. If the latter be superior to the force
that thus can be sent against it, and the coast be so defended as to
leave the navy free to strike where it will, we can maintain our
rights; not merely the rights which international law concedes, and
which the moral sense of nations now supports, but also those equally
real rights which, though not conferred by law, depend upon a clear
preponderance of interest, upon obviously necessary policy, upon
self-preservation, either total or partial. Were we so situated now in
respect of military strength, we could secure our perfectly just claim
as to the seal fisheries; not by seizing foreign ships on the open sea,
but by the evident fact that, our cities being protected from maritime
attack, our position and superior population lay open the Canadian
Pacific, as well as the frontier of the Dominion, to do with as we
please. Diplomats do not flourish such disagreeable truths in each
other's faces; they look for a _modus vivendi_, and find it.

While, therefore, the advantages of our own position in the western
hemisphere, and the disadvantages under which the operations of a
European state would labor, are undeniable and just elements in the
calculations of the statesman, it is folly to look upon them as