war included some brilliant displays of the efficacy of sea-power.  It was this which put the British in possession of Canada, decided which European race was to rule in India, and led to a British occupation of Havannah in one hemisphere and of Manila in the other.  In the same war we learned how, by a feeble use of sea-power, a valuable possession like Minorca may be lost.  At the same time our maritime trade and the general prosperity of the kingdom increased enormously.  The result of the conflict made plain to all the paramount importance of having in the principal posts in the Government men capable of understanding what war is and how it ought to be conducted.

[Footnote 42:  Mahan, Inf.on_Hist._ p. 280.]

This lesson, as the sequel demonstrated, had not been learned when Great Britain became involved in a war with the insurgent colonies in North America.  Mahan’s comment is striking:  ’The magnificence of sea-power and its value had perhaps been more clearly shown by the uncontrolled sway and consequent exaltation of one belligerent; but the lesson thus given, if more striking, is less vividly interesting than the spectacle of that sea-power meeting a foe worthy of its steel, and excited to exertion by a strife which endangered not only its most valuable colonies, but even its own shores.’[43] We were, in fact, drawing too largely on the prestige acquired during the Seven Years’ war; and we were governed by men who did not understand the first principles of naval warfare, and would not listen to those who did.  They quite ignored the teaching of the then comparatively recent wars which has been alluded to already—­that we should look upon the enemy’s coast as our frontier.  A century and a half earlier the Dutchman Grotius had written—­

  Quae meta Britannis
  Litora sunt aliis.

[Footnote 43:  Influenceon_Hist._ p. 338.]

Though ordinary prudence would have suggested ample preparation, British ministers allowed their country to remain unprepared.  Instead of concentrating their efforts on the main objective, they frittered away force in attempts to relieve two beleaguered garrisons under the pretext of yielding to popular pressure, which is the official term for acting on the advice of irresponsible and uninstructed busybodies.  ‘Depuis le debut de la crise,’ says Captain Chevalier, ’les ministres de la Grande Bretagne s’etaient montres inferieurs a leur tache.’  An impressive result of this was the repeated appearance of powerful and indeed numerically superior hostile fleets in the English Channel.  The war—­notwithstanding that, perhaps because, land operations constituted an important part of it, and in the end settled the issue—­was essentially oceanic.  Captain Mahan says it was ‘purely maritime.’  It may be true that, whatever the belligerent result, the political result, as regards the status of the insurgent colonies, would have been the same.