In the first
place, Great Britain preserved half of what was later to constitute the
United States, and gained Canada and an ascendancy in India--empires
wider, richer, and more diverse than those of a Caesar or an Alexander.
Henceforth Great Britain was indisputably the preeminent colonizing
country--a nation upon whose domains the sun never set. It meant that
the English language was to spread as no other language, until to-day
one hundred and sixty millions of people use the tongue which in the
fifteenth century was spoken by hardly five millions.
Secondly, even more important than this vast land empire was the
dominion of the sea which Great Britain acquired, for from the series
of wars just considered, and especially from the last, dates the
maritime supremacy of England. Since then her commerce, protected and
advertised by the most powerful navy in the world, has mounted by leaps
and bounds, so that now half the vessels which sail the seas bear at
their masthead the Union Jack. From her dominions beyond the oceans and
from her ships upon the seas Great Britain drew power and prestige;
British merchants acquired opulence with resulting social and political
importance to themselves and to their country, and British manufactures
received that stimulation which prepared the way for the Industrial
Revolution of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
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