The British
people, instead of organising themselves as one body, the nation, have
organised themselves into two bodies, the two "political" parties.
England's one chance lies in recovering the unity that has been lost,
which she must do by restoring the nation to its due place in men's
hearts and lives. To find out how that is to be done we must once more
look at Europe and at England's relations to Europe.
IX.
NEW CONDITIONS
It has been seen how, as a result of the struggle with Napoleon,
England, from 1805 onwards, was the only sea power remaining in Europe,
and indeed, with the exception of the United States, the only sea power
in the world. One of the results was that she had for many years the
monopoly of the whole ocean, not merely for the purposes of war, but
also for the purposes of trade. The British mercantile marine continued
through the greater part of the nineteenth century to increase its
preponderance over all others, and this remarkable, and probably quite
exceptional, growth was greatly favoured by the Civil War in America,
during which the mercantile marine of the United States received from
the action of the Confederate cruisers a damage from which it has never
recovered.
In the years immediately following 1805, Great Britain in self-defence,
or as a means of continuing the war against France, in regard to which
her resources for operations on land were limited, had recourse to the
operations of blockade, by which the sea was closed, as far as possible,
to enemy merchantmen while Great Britain prohibited neutral ships from
carrying enemy goods.
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