also for the purposes of trade. The British mercantile marine continued
through the greater part of the nineteenth century to increase its
preponderance over all others, and this remarkable, and probably quite
exceptional, growth was greatly favoured by the Civil War in America,
during which the mercantile marine of the United States received from
the action of the Confederate cruisers a damage from which it has never
recovered.

In the years immediately following 1805, Great Britain in self-defence,
or as a means of continuing the war against France, in regard to which
her resources for operations on land were limited, had recourse to the
operations of blockade, by which the sea was closed, as far as possible,
to enemy merchantmen while Great Britain prohibited neutral ships from
carrying enemy goods. Napoleon replied by the attempt to exclude British
goods from the Continent altogether, and indeed the pressure produced by
Great Britain's blockades compelled Napoleon further to extend his
domination on the Continent. Thus the other continental States found
themselves between the devil and the deep sea. They had to submit to the
domination of Napoleon on land and to the complete ascendency of Great
Britain on the waters which surrounded their coasts. The British claims
to supremacy at sea were unanimously resented by all the continental
States, which all suffered from them, but in all cases the national
resentment against French invasion or French occupation of territory was
greater than the resentment against the invisible pressure exercised by
the British navy. In the wars of liberation, though Great Britain was
the welcome ally of all the States that were fighting against France,
the pressure of British sea power was none the less disagreeable and, in
the years of peace which followed, the British monopoly of sea power, of
sea-carriage, of manufacturing industry, and of international trade were
equally disliked by almost all the nations of Europe. Protective duties