those States, the climatic conditions, make
it plain at once that sea power will there, even more than in the case
of Turkey, determine what foreign State shall predominate,--if not by
actual possession, by its influence over the native governments. The
geographical position of the United States and her intrinsic power
give her an undeniable advantage; but that advantage will not avail if
there is a great inferiority of organized brute-force, which still
remains the last argument of republics as of kings. Herein lies to us
the great and still living interest of the Seven Years' War. In it we
have seen and followed England, with an army small as compared with
other States, as is still her case to-day, first successfully
defending her own shores, then carrying her arms in every direction,
spreading her rule and influence over remote regions, and not only
binding them to her obedience, but making them tributary to her
wealth, her strength, and her reputation. As she loosens the grasp and
neutralizes the influence of France and Spain in regions beyond the
sea, there is perhaps seen the prophecy of some other great nation in
days yet to come, that will incline the balance of power in some
future sea war, whose scope will be recognized afterward, if not by
contemporaries, to have been the political future and the economical
development of regions before lost to civilization; but that nation
will not be the United States if the moment find her indifferent, as
now, to the empire of the seas.

The direction then given to England's efforts, by the instinct of the
nation and the fiery genius of Pitt, continued after the war, and has
profoundly influenced her subsequent policy. Mistress now of North
America, lording it in India, through the company whose territorial
conquests had been ratified by native princes, over twenty millions of
inhabitants,--a population larger than that of Great Britain and
having a revenue respectable alongside of that of the home
government,--England, with yet other rich possessions scattered far
and wide over the globe, had ever before her eyes, as a salutary
lesson, the severe chastisement which the weakness of Spain had
allowed her to inflict upon that huge disjointed empire. The words of
the English naval historian of that war, speaking about Spain, apply
with slight modifications to England in our own day.

"Spain is precisely that power against which England can always
contend with the fa