When the war of the Spanish Succession came to an end, the navy held perhaps an even higher place than it has occupied since. At the signing of the Peace of Utrecht, Great Britain was not so much the greatest naval power in the world as the only power. Holland had been overtaxed by the necessity of taking a foremost place in the war on land; France was bled nearly to death; Spain had ceased to possess even the show of a fleet. The Scandinavian nations and Russia were confined to the Baltic. Elsewhere there was nothing. In the midst of this general prostration we ruled at sea, not only without an equal, but without a second. There was a great danger in a supremacy of this nature. In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king, and he who is the best because the others are very bad may himself be far from good. The truth concerning the British navy during the earlier eighteenth century is that it owed at least as much to fortune as to its merits. At heart it was sound, and moreover it existed by a necessity, and in conformity with the nature of things, since it was for this country the indispensable instrument not only of power but of safety. Therefore it could not absolutely fail till the nation behind it withered. None the less it was hampered by defects, which might well have proved all but ruinous, had our enemy been more capable. Yet that he sank so completely by his own weakness was perhaps, in the long run, a misfortune to us. A sound beating at some not vital point, which could have been demonstrated to be the result of maladministration, would probably have roused the nation into taking the Admiralty and the navy in hand, and would have been for our good. No such lesson was inflicted, and we drowsed on in rather ignoble toleration for a dull half-century. A sound beating at some not vital point which could have been shown to be the result of pedantic adherence to a stupid method of fighting might have stung the navy itself into intellectual activity. Again no such lesson was given, and the navy drowsed on in brainless acquiescence to the Fighting Instructions. Great then as our position was, when compared with our neighbours’, we were yet at a level from which we could not have sunk without becoming dangerously bad.