he growth of her
sea power. While as an open enemy she struck at France upon the sea,
so as an artful friend, many at least believed, she sapped the power
of Holland afloat. The treaty between the two countries provided that
of the sea forces Holland should furnish three eighths, England five
eighths, or nearly double. Such a provision, coupled with a further
one which made Holland keep up an army of 102,000 against England's
40,000, virtually threw the land war on one and the sea war on the
other. The tendency, whether designed or not, is evident; and at the
peace, while Holland received compensation by land, England obtained,
besides commercial privileges in France, Spain, and the Spanish West
Indies, the important maritime concessions of Gibraltar and Port Mahon
in the Mediterranean; of Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and Hudson's Bay
in North America. The naval power of France and Spain had disappeared;
that of Holland thenceforth steadily declined. Posted thus in America,
the West Indies, and the Mediterranean, the English government
thenceforth moved firmly forward on the path which made of the English
kingdom the British Empire. For the twenty-five years following the
Peace of Utrecht, peace was the chief aim of the ministers who
directed the policy of the two great seaboard nations, France and
England; but amid all the fluctuations of continental politics in a
most unsettled period, abounding in petty wars and shifty treaties,
the eye of England was steadily fixed on the maintenance of her sea
power. In the Baltic, her fleets checked the attempts of Peter the
Great upon Sweden, and so maintained a balance of power in that sea,
from which she drew not only a great trade but the chief part of her
naval stores, and which the Czar aimed to make a Russian lake. Denmark
endeavored to establish an East India company aided by foreign
capital; England and Holland not only forbade their subjects to join
it, but threatened Denmark, and thus stopped an enterprise they
thought adverse to their sea interests. In the Netherlands, which by
the Utrecht Treaty had passed to Austria, a similar East India
company, having Ostend for its port, was formed, with the emperor's
sanction. This step, meant to restore to the Low Countries the trade
lost to them through their natural outlet of the Scheldt, was opposed
by the sea powers England and Holland; and their greediness for the
monopoly of trade, helped in this instance by France, stifled t