with those rich and distant regions, and to assert her will in
any disputes arising among the trading-stations of the different
nationalities. The commerce which had sustained her in prosperity, and
her allies in military efficiency, during the war, though checked and
harassed by the enemy's cruisers (to which she could pay only partial
attention amid the many claims upon her), started with a bound into
new life when the war was over. All over the world, exhausted by their
share of the common suffering, people were longing for the return of
prosperity and peaceful commerce; and there was no country ready as
England was in wealth, capital, and shipping to forward and reap the
advantages of every enterprise by which the interchange of commodities
was promoted, either by lawful or unlawful means. In the War of the
Spanish Succession, by her own wise management and through the
exhaustion of other nations, not only her navy but her trade was
steadily built up; and indeed, in that dangerous condition of the
seas, traversed by some of the most reckless and restless cruisers
France ever sent out, the efficiency of the navy meant safer voyages,
and so more employment for the merchant-ships. The British
merchant-ships, being better protected than those of the Dutch, gained
the reputation of being far safer carriers, and the carrying-trade
naturally passed more and more into their hands; while the habit of
employing them in preference, once established, was likely to
continue.

"Taking all things together," says an historian of the British
navy, "I doubt whether the credit of the English nation ever
stood higher than at this period, or the spirit of the people
higher. The success of our arms at sea, the necessity of
protecting our trade, and the popularity of every step taken to
increase our maritime power, occasioned such measures to be
pursued as annually added to our force. Hence arose that mighty
difference which at the close of the year 1706 appeared in the
Royal Navy; this, not only in the number but in the quality of
the ships, was much superior to what it had been at the time of
the Revolution or even before. Hence it was that our trade
rather increased than diminished during the last war, and that
we gained so signally by our strict intercourse with
Portugal."[77]

The sea power of England therefore was not merely in the great navy,
with which we too commonly and