In sixty-seven duels of single English frigates with French, Dutch, or Spanish vessels of the same rating, the adversary succumbed; in no single case was an English vessel taken by an enemy of equal force.
CHAPTER XXXIX.
REACTION AND REFORM.
1815-1832.
The great struggle was now over, and a new period had commenced, in which European wars were to be as rare as they had of late been common, for between 1815 and 1848 there was no serious strife between any of the powers of Western and Central Europe, and the general peace was only interrupted by comparatively unimportant broils in the Balkan peninsula and in Spain.
England, whose troops were not destined to fire another shot in Europe for forty years, had full leisure to look around her and count up the cost of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. The table of profit and loss was not at first sight a very cheerful one. The weight of debt and taxation was obvious to every man, while the compensating advantages, resulting from the firm establishment of our naval and commercial supremacy in all the seas of the world, were only just beginning to make themselves felt. The country and its governors were at the same time beginning to feel very uneasy at a silent change in the social life of England.
The industrial revolution.
For, noticeable as were the years 1793-1815 for the display of England's vigour abroad, they were even more remarkable for the social change which was taking place within. In those twenty-three years was consummated the transformation of England from an agricultural to a manufacturing community, a transformation the stranger because agriculture was being all the time artificially stimulated, by laws for the protection of the English farmer against foreign competition. So the change in the general character of the English state was due not to a decay in agriculture, but solely to an increase in manufactures. The war which, as Napoleon had trusted, would crush our industries, had only fostered them, by putting us beyond the reach of foreign competition, and throwing open to us alone every market and line of trade outside Europe. For instead of our prosperity being checked by the loss of our continental trade, continental prosperity had been checked by the loss of all maritime traffic with Asia and America, which passed entirely into our hands.
English manufacturing supremacy.