peace of 1814, England restored to Holland the larger portion of this territory, though not without many remonstrances from her own merchants and statesmen.  But Ceylon and Cape Colony she did not restore.  These were more to her than rich islands.  They were links in a grand chain of commercial connection.  As Aden is the half-way station on the overland route, so Cape Colony is the half-way station on the ocean route; and Ceylon, while it rounds out and completes the great peninsula of which it may be considered to be a part, furnishes in Point de Galle, at the south, a most needed port of refuge, and on the east, at Trincomalee, one of the finest of naval harbors, with dock-yards, machine-shops, and arsenal complete.  Even England could be generous to a fallen foe, whose enmity had been quite as much a matter of necessity as inclination.  But by no mistimed clemency could she sacrifice such solid advantages as these.

This steady march toward the control of the commercial waters of the earth, some of whose footsteps we have now traced, reveals the existence of as steady a purpose.  This colonial empire, so wide, so consistent, and so well compacted, is not the work of dull men, or the result of a series of fortunate blunders.  Back of its history, and creating its history, there must have been a clear, calm, persistent, ambitious policy,—­a policy which has usually regarded appearances, but which has also managed to accomplish its cherished purposes.  And the end towards which this policy tends is always one and the same:  to enlarge England’s commercial resources, and to build up side by side with this peaceful strength a naval power which shall keep untarnished her proudest title,—­“Mistress and sovereign of the seas.”

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With justice England is called the mightiest naval power in the world.  And well she may be.  She has every element to make her mighty.  The waves which beat upon all her coasts train up a race of seamen as hardy, as skilful, as courageous as ever sailed the sea.  In her bosom are hidden inexhaustible stores of iron, copper, and coal.  Her Highland hills are covered with forests of oak and larch, growing while men sleep.  Her borders are crowded with workshops, and her skies are dark with the smoke of their chimneys, and the air rings with the sound of their hammers.  Her docks are filled with ships, and her watchful guardians are on every sea.  Her eyes are open to profit by every invention.  And her strong colonies, overlooking all waters, give new vigor and a better distribution to her naval resources.  A mighty naval power she is, and, for good or evil, a mighty naval power she is likely to continue.  The great revolutions in warfare, which in our day are proceeding with such wonderful rapidity, may for a time disturb this supremacy; but in the end, the genius of England, essentially maritime, and as clear and strong on the sea as it is apt to be weak and confused upon the land, will enable her to stand on her own element, as she has stood for centuries, with no superior, and with scarcely a rival.