The fact is that fleet evolutions were still in too immature a condition for so difficult a manoeuvre to be admissible.

Presumably therefore our author chose the attack on the weathermost ships, although they were also the van, as the lesser evil in spite of its serious drawbacks.
The whole question of the principles involved in his suggestion is worthy of the closest consideration.

For the difficulty it reveals of effecting a sound form of concentration without breaking the line as well as of adopting any form that involved breaking the line gives us the key of that alleged reaction of tactics in the eighteenth century which has been so widely ridiculed.
FOOTNOTES: [1] The original draft corrected by Lord Addington, principal secretary of state, is in _S.P.Domestic_, Car.

II, 158.
[2] See _post_, p.

170.
[3] _Cf_.