Page:Memoir upon the negotiations between Spain and the United States of America which led to the treaty of 1819.djvu/102

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��said the An^lo -American navy consists. The fri- j^ates and the remaining eight ships are not yet built, but they will be in a short time, probably before the expiration of the eight years; and Con- gress will again appropriate another sum, and au- thorize the President to build other ships, frigates and smaller vessels, going on thus without inter- mission, until they possess a fleet corresponding with the exalted ideas of aggrandizement, domi- nion and navsil power, which fill the presumptuous imagination of every Anglo-American.

The plan which the minister of marine pre- sented, in 1816, for the annual increase of the na- vy, was intended to show the propriety of increas- ing it every year, with 202 guns, and that the whole cost every year would be 1,018,676 dollars. The cost of a 74, which, as 1 have said, carries 96 guns, is estimated in the United States at 333,000 dollars* and that of a 44 gun frigate, carrying from 54 to 56 guns, at 198,000o The cost of vessels that mount from St to 74 guns, is estimated at the rate of 4,500 dollars per gun — of those that mount 20, at 3,500 dollars per gun, and so in proportion.

The government has all the vessels belonging to the national marine built by contract, and merely appoints inspectors to see to the (juality of the tim- ber and the construction: by this means much mo- ney is saved, and the vessels are well built, and without delay.

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