The evidence seems to show that even for its own special ends such a mode of war is inconclusive, worrying but not deadly; it might almost be said that it causes needless suffering.

What, however, is the effect of this policy upon the general ends of the war, to which it is one of the means, and to which it is subsidiary?
How, again, does it react upon the people that practise it?
As the historical evidences will come up in detail from time to time, it need here only be summarized.

The result to England in the days of Charles II.

has been seen,--her coast insulted, her shipping burned almost within sight of her capital.

In the War of the Spanish Succession, when the control of Spain was the military object, while the French depended upon a cruising war against commerce, the navies of England and Holland, unopposed, guarded the coasts of the peninsula, blocked the port of Toulon, forced the French succors to cross the Pyrenees, and by keeping open the sea highway, neutralized the geographical nearness of France to the seat of war.
Their fleets seized Gibraltar, Barcelona, and Minorca, and co-operating with the Austrian army failed by little of reducing Toulon.