irest prospect of advantage and honor. That
extensive monarchy is exhausted at heart, her resources lie at a
great distance, and whatever power commands the sea, may command
the wealth and commerce of Spain. The dominions from which she
draws her resources, lying at an immense distance from the
capital and from one another, make it more necessary for her
than for any other State to temporize, until she can inspire
with activity all parts of her enormous but disjointed
empire."[111]

It would be untrue to say that England is exhausted at heart; but her
dependence upon the outside world is such as to give a certain
suggestiveness to the phrase.

This analogy of positions was not overlooked by England. From that
time forward up to our own day, the possessions won for her by her sea
power have combined with that sea power itself to control her policy.
The road to India--in the days of Clive a distant and perilous voyage
on which she had not a stopping-place of her own--was reinforced as
opportunity offered by the acquisition of St. Helena, of the Cape of
Good Hope, of the Mauritius. When steam made the Red Sea and
Mediterranean route practicable, she acquired Aden, and yet later has
established herself at Socotra. Malta had already fallen into her
hands during the wars of the French Revolution, and her commanding
position, as the corner-stone upon which the coalitions against
Napoleon rested, enabled her to claim it at the Peace of 1815. Being
but a short thousand miles from Gibraltar, the circles of military
command exercised by these two places intersect. The present day has
seen the stretch from Malta to the Isthmus of Suez, formerly without a
station, guarded by the cession to her of Cyprus. Egypt, despite the
jealousy of France, has passed under English control. The importance
of that position to India, understood by Napoleon and Nelson, led the
latter at once to send an officer overland to Bombay with the news of
the battle of the Nile and the downfall of Bonaparte's hopes. Even
now, the jealousy with which England views the advance of Russia in
Central Asia is the result of those days in which her sea power and
resources triumphed over the weakness of D'Ache and the genius of
Suffren, and wrenched the peninsula of India from the ambition of the
French.

"For the first time since the Middle Ages," says M. Martin,
speaking of the Seven Years' War, "England had conquered Franc