THE HISTORY OF OUR FOREIGN POLICY.* ENGLISH history, from the

point of view of the relations of England with other States, has recently attracted a share of notice which bids fair to atone for the neglect it has hitherto suffered. The last work of Sir John Seeley, Regius Professor of Modern History at Cambridge, The Growth of British _Policy, is now accompanied by a work from Professor Montague Burrows, Chichele Professor of Modern History at Oxford, entitled The History of the Foreign Policy of Great Britain. The latter may be regarded as more or less a supplement of the first, for while Sir John Seeley ends his in- quiry with the reign of William III., Professor Burrows brings his up to date, devoting the greater part of it to the later periods upon which his Cambridge colleague does not touch at all. In- deed the first portion of his book, which covers the same ground as that of Sir John Seeley, is neither the most important nor the most successful. The main purpose of the author is to show the continuous development of British foreign policy. According to his opinion, it has been substantially the same ever since the Norman Conquest, and his anxiety to show its continuity has led him, we think, to insist too strongly upon points of resemblance, and to ignore points of difference that are equally striking. Roughly speaking, the fundamental principles of British foreign policy, according to the author, may be summed up thus. Under William the Conqueror the British nation recognised its position as an island which had -four times been invaded and overrun by foreign foes. To guard against a recurrence of invasion it was necessary to organise a standing naval force under the Crown, and to maintain alliances with neighbouring Continental Powers -which were opposed to the enemies of England. And these, the author maintains, are still the fundamental principles of our policy abroad. Well, it is possible, of course, to reduce all the different phases of our early foreign policy to some underlying idea of this kind, but only by rendering a very imperfect account of their nature and aim. Moreover, as regards the first principle, the maintenance of a strong Navy, it can hardly be said to have existed till the time of Elizabeth, or to have been held of much importance until a considerably later date. As to the maintenance of a balance of power amongst the Continental nations, it was a policy which we 'believe to have been very imperfectly understood before the days of William III., and only accidentally followed. To credit the early English Kings and their advisers with a well- defmed intention of holding the balance of Europe is to credit them with a great deal more knowledge and political fore. sight than they probably possessed. Our alliances abroad, until the time of Cromwell, were made for dynastic rather than for national reasons ; for the support of a particular family upon the throne rather than for the safeguarding of a national interest. We know that the idea had become more or less an English tradition, -chiefly since the days when Henry VIII. held the balance between Francis I. and Charles V., but it was an idea more .often in abeyance than not. One daughter of Henry VIII., Mary, threw it to the winds altogether. The other, Elizabeth, -supported it with signal success, but we should hesitate to say, with any real conviction of its merits. The Stuarts paid it no attention, with the final result that Louis XIV. became the tyrant of Europe, as well as the protector of the Stuart • The History of the Foreign Policy of Great Britain. By Montagne Burrows. London: Wiliam Blackwood and Sons. dynasty in England. It was William III, who restored the balance and gave it its first full and effectual expression. It

is from the date of his reign, we think, that Great Britain possessed anything like a continuous foreign policy, and that our author's history enters upon its most interesting period.

From this point onwards Professor Burrows has given us a very excellent and readable account of the steady growth of England as a Continental Power, though he always, to our mind, lays rather too much stress upon its maritime aspect. However, that is a fault, if it be a fault at all, upon the right side, for the maritime aspect has generally been too little regarded. With the growth of our trade in the Mediterranean,

and of our commerce with the West Indies, two more im- portant factors were added to our foreign policy. The capture

of Gibraltar in the same year as the battle of Blenheim hardly attracted any notice amidst the rejoicings over Marl- borough's victory, and yet it was an event that was destined to have an even more important influence upon our policy abroad. As the author says, it constituted a distinct land- mark ; from that date we were to maintain the control of the Mediterranean :—

" The Mediterranean was to be kept open not only by such alliances as were possible with the holders of the two peninsulas which jutted out into the midst of it from the Continental base, but by British stations which should guard its fleets at the entrance. It should henceforward be in the power of Great Britain to control the commerce of the inland sea, and to provide for that purpose fleets which might rest upon a secure basis."

It must be confessed that the real importance of this policy

was not grasped immediately. More than once has the cession of Gibraltar been seriously considered. The other factor, which our author sums up in the words,—" ships, colonies, and commerce," has eventually proved the most wide- reaching of all. The history of the events which led to our war with Spain in 1739, including the famous episode of Captain Jenkins's ear, is not pleasant reading, but it should be very profitable to politicians who have forgotten the

results of Walpole's administration, and are disposed to advocate peace at any price. The author has no difficulty in showing that the war, which Burke characterised as a war "of plunder and extreme injustice," was one into which we were literally kicked. There was more than the freedom of

our commerce at stake, we were fighting, though we knew it but dimly at the time, for our future existence as an Empire. The most immediate result after the war, how- ever, was the enormous and rapid development of British commerce, whose interests, henceforward, became the leading factor in our foreign policy. We became a nation of shop- keepers, but we were not able to attain that position, nor have we been since able to maintain it, without becoming a fighting race as well. It was, however, our strength in the former capacity rather than in the latter that enabled us to restore the balance of Europe when it was most seriously

threatened by the ambition of Napoleon. Had it not been for the English subsidies, even the wavering front that was shown

to the conqueror by the]Continental Powers would have been impossible. As the author says, concert among them without a solid base would have been hopeless. "That base was the British Treasury, and Napoleon fell before the indomitable perseverance of his triumphant enemy, the British taxpayer." Fortune served us bravely in producing a Nelson and a Wellington to lead our fighting strength to its ultimate victory, but the victory was not won without heavy sacrifices. We did not shrink from the sacrifices entailed upon us first by our subsidised allies and then by the Peninsular War, nor did we shrink from such an unscrupulous measure as the high-

handed appropriation of the Danish Fleet in answer to the treaty of Tilsit, and time has justified BB.

It is impossible within the limits of a review to do more than merely indicate the general tenor of Professor Barrows's work. Bat we should like to draw especial atten- tion to his forcible train of reasoning to show the intimate

and growing connection between our foreign relations and our commerce and Colonies. It was our good fortune to rescue Europe from the imprisonment of Napoleon's " Con- tinental System," and unless we study and profit by the history of that past we may yet again find ourselves confronted

by an equally threatening tyranny. The strong part of the author's work is his treatment of our naval history ; but the whole of his book is interesting and excellently well written.

Although we do not quite agree with his theory of continuity in our past foreign policy, we should like to quote one more passage in which he presses it upon our attention, after the conclusion of the Napoleonic War :—

"It may further be observed in reviewing the action of Great Britain, both in the process and conclusion of this, the greatest struggle in which she has ever been engaged, that it was exactly consistent with the whole of her previous Foreign policy. What she now contended for and carried may be described in the simple words already familiar to us—viz., the safety of her shores, her commerce, and her dependencies, the balance of European States, the concert of the European Powers. The last, indeed, had been a policy of more recent date than the rest ; but some glimmerings of the principle are to be found in the time of Elizabeth, and when Europe gradually emerged from the barbaric turbulence of the religious wars, it found its most definite expression in the diplomacy of Great Britain. She had also proved in these struggles her perfect comprehension of the fundamental political truth, that a nation which is not ready at a great crisis to make every sacrifice demanded by the occasion is doomed to bhe loss of its influence, and then of its independence."

With which words we will take leave of our author, strongly recommending them, and indeed the rest of the book, to the consideration of the timid school of politicians.