If
navies, as all agree, exist for the protection of commerce, it
inevitably follows that in war they must aim at depriving their enemy
of that great resource; nor is it easy to conceive what broad military
use they can subserve that at all compares with the protection and
destruction of trade. This Sir George indeed sees, for he says
elsewhere, "Only on the principle of doing the utmost injury to an
enemy, with a view to hasten the issue of war, can commerce-destroying
be justified;" but he fails, I think, to appreciate the full
importance of this qualifying concession, and neither he nor Mr. White
seems to admit the immense importance of commerce-destroying, as such.

The mistake of both, I think, lies in not keeping clearly in
view--what both certainly perfectly understand--the difference between
the _guerre-de-course_, which is inconclusive, and commerce-destroying
(or commerce prevention) through strategic control of the sea by
powerful navies. Some nations more than others, but all maritime
nations more or less, depend for their prosperity upon maritime
commerce, and probably upon it more than upon any other single factor.
Either under their own flag or that of a neutral, either by foreign
trade or coasting trade, the sea is the greatest of boons to such a
state; and under every form its sea-borne trade is at the mercy of a
foe decisively superior.

Is it, then, to be expected that such foe will forego such
advantage,--will insist upon spending blood and money in fighting, or
money in the vain effort of maintaining a fleet which, having nothing
to fight, also keeps its hands off such an obvious means of crippling
the opponent and forcing him out of his ports? Great Britain's navy,
in the French wars, not only protected her own commerce, but also
annihilated that of the enemy; and both conditions--not one
alone--were essential to her triumph.

It is because Great Britain's sea power, though still superior, has
declined relatively to that of other states, and is no longer supreme,
that she has been induced to concede to neutrals the principle that
the flag covers the goods. It is a concession wrung from relative
weakness--or possibly from a mistaken humanitarianism; but, to
whatever due, it is all to the profit of the neutral and to the loss
of the stronger belligerent. The only justification, in policy, for
its yielding by the latter, is that she can no longer, as formerly,
bear the additional burden of hostili