ry and left its impress on the institutional scheme of
the Western civilisation. By grace of what may, for the present purpose,
be called historical accident, it happens that the interval of history
during which the bias of Natural Liberty made visible headway was also a
period during which these English-speaking peoples, among whom its
effects are chiefly visible, were relatively secure from international
disturbance, by force of inaccessibility. Little strain was put upon
their sense of national solidarity or national prowess; so little,
indeed, that there was some danger of their patriotic animosity falling
into decay by disuse; and then they were also busy with other things.
Peaceable intercourse, it is true, was relatively easy, active and
far-reaching--eighteenth and nineteenth centuries--as compared with what
had been the case before that time; but warlike intercourse on such a
scale as would constitute a substantial menace to any large nation was
nearly out of the question, so far as regards the English-speaking
peoples. The available means of aggression, as touches the case of these
particular communities, were visibly and consciously inadequate as
compared with the means of defense. The means of internal or
intra-national control or coercion were also less well provided by the
state of the arts current at that time than the means of peaceable
intercourse. These means of transport and communication were, at that
stage of their development, less well suited for the purposes of
far-reaching warlike strategy and the exercise of surveillance and
coercion over large spaces than for the purposes of peaceable traffic.

But the continued improvement in the means of communication during the
nineteenth century presently upset that situation, and so presently
began to neutralise the geographical quarantine which had hedged about
these communities that were inclined to let well enough alone. The
increasing speed and accuracy of movement in shipping, due to the
successful introduction of steam, as well as the concomitant increasing
size of the units of equipment, all runs to this effect and presently
sets at naught the peace barriers of sea and weather. So also the
development of railways and their increasing availability for strategic
uses, together with the far-reaching coordination of movement made
possible by their means and by the telegraph; all of which is further
facilitated by the increasing mass and density of popul