Note 24 — CHAP. III. THE VOYAGE OF THE THETIS.

This adoption, for political purposes, of a baneful system may, in an unforeseen emergency, tend to the overthrow of the state; and nothing, in my opinion, can be more injurious to the Navy than the usurpation of all distributive power by a ministry in exchange for parliamentary votes. In civil offices this may be merely obstructive—in the Navy it is destructive. Systems like these are such as no state can long exist under securely, and history warns us that from perversion of patronage great states have fallen.