Bourbon on the Spanish throne? Was it Spain, whose only gain
was to have a Bourbon king instead of an Austrian, and thus a closer
alliance with France? Was it Holland, with its barrier of fortified
towns, its ruined navy, and its exhausted people? Was it, lastly,
Austria, even though she had fought with the money of the sea powers,
and gained such maritime States as the Netherlands and Naples? Was it
with these, who had waged war more and more exclusively by land, and
set their eyes more and more on gains on the land, or was it not
rather with England, who had indeed paid for that continental war and
even backed it with her troops, but who meanwhile was building up her
navy, strengthening, extending, and protecting her commerce, seizing
maritime positions,--in a word, founding and rearing her sea power
upon the ruins of that of her rivals, friend and foe alike? It is not
to depreciate the gains of others that the eye fixes on England's
naval growth; their gains but bring out more clearly the immenseness
of hers. It was a gain to France to have a friend rather than an enemy
in her rear, though her navy and shipping were ruined. It was a gain
to Spain to be brought in close intercourse with a living country like
France after a century of political death, and she had saved the
greater part of her threatened possessions. It was a gain to Holland
to be definitively freed from French aggression, with Belgium in the
hands of a strong instead of a weak State. And it doubtless was a gain
to Austria not only to have checked, chiefly at the expense of others,
the progress of her hereditary enemy, but also to have received
provinces like Sicily and Naples, which, under wise government, might
become the foundation of a respectable sea power. But not one of these
gains, nor all together, compared in greatness, and much less in
solidity, with the gain to England of that unequalled sea power which
started ahead during the War of the League of Augsburg, and received
its completeness and seal during that of the Spanish Succession. By it
she controlled the great commerce of the open sea with a military
shipping that had no rival, and in the exhausted condition of the
other nations could have none; and that shipping was now securely
based on strong positions in all the disputed quarters of the world.
Although her Indian empire was not yet begun, the vast superiority of
her navy would enable her to control the communications of other
nations