But now, even if it were true-which it is notthat the capture of property was often accompanied by abuses, that would indeed be a good reason for devising methods to suppress those abuses, but it neither would nor can furnish ground for attacking the right on which those abuses might have been engrafted. And here again, that which has already been said must be repeated-that the capture and confiscation of property at sea is the one operation of warfare which is subject to calm, unimpassioned judicial decision before the act itself is completed; and that therefore, if it be liable to abuse, it is at any rate of all acts of warfare that in which the abuse is most certain to be detected, and due reparation most certain to be made.

Much has been said, though little has been proved, of the abuses to which the capture of property leads. It is alleged that the practice of this kind of warfare renders naval officers and men greedy of gain, and that it induces them to neglect enterprises of mere fighting in order to engage in those which promise prize-money. If this were so it would be in every way a gain. It would be a gain to humanity that the operations of war should be diverted from men's bodies to their goods; it would be a gain to the belligerent which would at once enrich itself and distress its enemy; and it would be a gain to the officers and seamen who would thus be rewarded for their toils by the enemy himself instead of becoming chargeable for increased pay and pension on their own countrymen.

But it is not true that the pursuit of prize has ever been sufficiently powerful a motive to draw officers and men away from duties in which hard knocks alone were to be given and received. It is so little true that all the great naval actions that have been

fought have been fought by sailors trained and practised to their trade in the pursuit of Prize.1 For indeed this is the very pursuit that makes keen sailors; this was the very pursuit which during the wars of the last and the beginning of the present century enabled English Commanders to make excellent seamen out of the sweepings of gaols and the rakings of the shore, brought on board by the pressgang in a frame of mind which would rather have induced them to fight against than for their country. And more than this, it is perhaps the one only inducement that will suffice continuously to draw sailors into the arduous service of a navy in time of war, that will keep them in it, or that will make them fight with any heart or spirit. Even ashore it is found necessary to offer to the soldier the allurements of booty as well as the prospect of increased pay and promotion; how much more then is it necessary to allow Prize to the sailor, whose life is always in his hand, and who has to contend with the elements as well as to do battle with the enemy. Yet without the capture of property there can be no Prize, and without Prize there can hardly be sailors of the stamp of those who fought under Hawke and Nelson, Howe, Rodney and Dundonald."

1 Between November, 1802, and November, 1811, nine years in all, Sir William Parker captured, as captain of the " Amazon," no less than sixty vessels, which produced to him as his own personal share of prize-money the sum of £35,211 118. 3d.Life of Sir W. Parker. Appendix.

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"I have seen it openly proclaimed that seamen will fight "for fighting's sake, and without expectation of reward. If the propounders of such an opinion were to ask themselves the question whether they engage in professional or commercial "pursuits from mere patriotism, and without hope of further "remuneration, then their reply would show them the fallacy

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"of ascribing to seamen a want of those motives which impel "all men to adventure and exertion. The result of my own experience is that seamen fight from two leading motives:— "1st, Prize-money. 2nd, From a well-grounded belief in their "own disciplinary experience, which refuses to be beaten, and is "not satisfied with less than conquest. Take away the first "motive and we may find difficulty on an emergency in getting men to accomplish the second."-Lord Dundonald's Autobiography, vol. i., p. 54.

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CHAPTER VI.

THE SEA THE ONLY ROAD FOR TRADE.

THE land divides the peoples of the earth; the sea unites them. Though the sea has always been regarded with fear if not with horror by the greater number of mankind, and though most men remain of Horace's opinion that he must have had a breast encircled by oak and triple brass who first dared to fit out and launch a ship, yet it remains historically true that the first intercommunications between nation and nation were by water; that human effort has always most successfully followed the coast-line; that where the sea reaches, there human activity is always most to be found; and that where the sea reaches not, there all communication with the rest of the world comes least and last of all. Thus, while the whole coast of Africa and those parts adjacent thereto have been known and traded with for centuries, it is but yesterday that any communication has been set up with, or so much as any knowledge gained of, the interior of that vast peninsular continent by the outside world; and the same may be said of those parts of Asia, and even of Europe, which are most remote from the sea. Nor are things likely ever to alter in this respect (unless, indeed, some means be discovered of navigating the airs as freely as we now navigate the seas), for the impediments in the way of free communication by land are

such as must otherwise for ever prevent it from competing on equal terms with the sea. On land a mountain, a morass, a river, a forest, a climate, or even so apparently insignificant a creature as a flysuch as the tsetse-has been and still is found to be an insurmountable obstacle to intercommunication, so that populations between whom such an obstacle intervenes, although living within a short distance of each other, are practically as much separated as though a hemisphere divided them. No such obstacles exist on the seas, which (except for the entirely insignificant case of the few ports in the northern hemisphere closed in the winter by ice) afford an ever open road from every point on their shores to every other point, however remote. And, as this road is, of all, the least interrupted of any, so also is it the easiest, the cheapest, and, on the whole, the safest of all, while every day tends to make it safer, and its use more certain. Storm and tempest, ten times greater than any that Horace ever knew, are now held of so little account that they scarce affect by a few hours an Atlantic passage of 3,000 miles; even the greater danger of fog is scarcely regarded; and the greatest danger of all-the land-is on all the great ocean highways so marked and guarded by light, beacon, and buoy, as to have lost most of its dangers whether by day or by night. If, indeed, we regard the marvellous passenger-service which has grown up between North America and Europe, and consider the safety, certainty, and exactitude with which the great liners in that service make their passages, in summer and winter, through fine weather and foul, scarcely varying a few hours in a passage now reduced to a little over six days, whether they meet storm or calm, we should be brought near to