her sea strength was exhausted, her population diminished, her
financial condition ruined. The European territory surrendered was on
her northern and eastern boundaries; and she abandoned the use of the
port of Dunkirk, the centre of that privateering warfare so dreaded by
English merchants. In America, the cession of Nova Scotia and
Newfoundland was the first step toward that entire loss of Canada
which befell half a century later; but for the present she retained
Cape Breton Island, with its port Louisburg, the key to the Gulf and
River St. Lawrence.

The gains of England, by the treaty and the war, corresponded very
nearly to the losses of France and Spain, and were all in the
direction of extending and strengthening her sea power. Gibraltar and
Port Mahon in the Mediterranean, and the colonies already mentioned in
North America, afforded new bases to that power, extending and
protecting her trade. Second only to the expansion of her own was the
injury to the sea power of France and Holland, by the decay of their
navies in consequence of the immense drain of the land warfare;
further indications of that decay will be given later. The very
neglect of Holland to fill up her quota of ships, and the bad
condition of those sent, while imposing extra burdens upon England,
may be considered a benefit, forcing the British navy to greater
development and effort. The disproportion in military power on the sea
was further increased by the destruction of the works at Dunkirk; for
though not in itself a first-class port, nor of much depth of water,
it had great artificial military strength, and its position was
peculiarly adapted to annoy English trade. It was but forty miles from
the South Foreland and the Downs, and the Channel abreast it is but
twenty miles wide. Dunkirk was one of Louis' earliest acquisitions,
and in its development was as his own child; the dismantling of the
works and filling-in of the port show the depth of his humiliation at
this time. But it was the wisdom of England not to base her sea power
solely on military positions nor even on fighting-ships, and the
commercial advantages she had now gained by the war and the peace were
very great. The grant of the slave trade with Spanish America, in
itself lucrative, became yet more so as the basis for an immense
smuggling intercourse with those countries, which gave the English a
partial recompense for their failure to obtain actual possession;
while the cess