r to aid the
prowess of the sea-kings who are her natural defenders. It is impossible
for the thoughtful student of history to walk across Trafalgar Square,
and gaze on the image of the mightiest naval hero that ever lived, on
the summit of his lofty column and guarded by the royal lions, looking
down towards the government-house of the land that he freed from the
dread of Napoleonic invasion and towards that ancient church wherein the
most sacred memories of English talent and English toil are clustered
together,--it is impossible, I say, to look at this, and not admire both
the artistic instinct that devised so happy a symbolism, and the rare
good-fortune of our Teutonic ancestors in securing a territorial
position so readily defensible against the assaults of despotic powers.
But it was not merely in the simple facility of warding off external
attack that the insular position of England was so serviceable. This
ease in warding off external attack had its most marked effect upon the
internal polity of the nation. It never became necessary for the English
government to keep up a great standing army. For purposes of external
defence a navy was all-sufficient; and there is this practical
difference between a permanent army and a permanent navy. Both are
originally designed for purposes of external defence; but the one can
readily be used for purposes of internal oppression, and the other
cannot. Nobody ever heard of a navy putting up an empire at auction and
knocking down the throne of the world to a Didius Julianus. When,
therefore, a country is effectually screened by water from external
attack, it is screened in a way that permits its normal political
development to go on internally without those manifold military
hinderances that have ordinarily been so obstructive in the history of
civilization. Hence we not only see why, after the Norman Conquest had
operated to increase its unity and its strength, England enjoyed a far
greater amount of security and was far more peaceful than any other
country in Europe; but we also see why society never assumed the
military type in England which it assumed upon the continent; we see how
it was that the bonds of feudalism were far looser here than elsewhere,
and therefore how it happened that nowhere else was the condition of the
common people so good politically. We now begin to see, moreover, how
thoroughly Professor Stubbs and Mr. Freeman are justified in insisting
upon the fact