W. S. Lindsay

“ In harbour, in the Channel, or on the open sea, they became alike objects of their eager prey. While some of these freebooters were content to lie in wait for such vessels as contained Flemish prisoners whom they would set at liberty, others resolutely entered Spanish ports to rescue the English vessels, crews, and cargoes which had been detained in them. But their patriotism, like their religious enthusiasm, was ever blended with a love of plunder, for they invariably helped themselves to any valuables they came across in their cruises by land or by sea. ”

“ Though England still stands first as a maritime power, and has consequently at her disposal the most extensive means of destroying an enemy’s maritime commerce, she has, on the other hand, by far the largest amount of property of any nation at all times afloat, and must therefore be the largest sufferer in the event of hostilities with any power which can equip a fleet of privateers. ”

“ In the face of many difficulties, private traders, whenever they obtained a footing in the trade of the East, were certain immediately afterwards to secure an ascendancy over the Company in its trading operations, and in a very short time trebled the trade of England with the East. Such in this case, as in numerous other instances, are the effects of individual energy, even when curtailed and contracted as in the present instance, over monopoly, however influential and powerful. How indelibly marked are now the footprints of free-trade in the pages of the commercial history of the East Indies! ”

“ By this greatly extended intercourse with other nations the Americans not only augmented their material wealth, but became acquainted with the habits, manners, science, arts, resources, wealth, and power of those countries with which they carried on a profitable trade. They were thus enabled to avail themselves of all the stock of accumulated experience and wisdom which the elder nations of Europe had slowly, and, at the cost of so much labour, bloodshed, and incessant struggles, secured. ”

“ Long peace, such as it is by force of the Spanish Inquisition, becometh to England more hurtful than open war. It is the secret and determined policy of Spain to destroy the English fleets and pilots, masters and sailors, by means of the Inquisition. The Spanish king pretends that he dare not offend the Holy House, while it is said in England we may not proclaim war against Spain for the revenge of a few, forgetting that a good war may end all these mischiefs. ”

“ Hence it is that we find incessant remonstrances by shipowners that foreigners came to English ports with freights and cargoes of small value, and loaded tin, lead, and other goods only to be obtained in England, and their assertion that, by the help of drawbacks and of bounties freely conceded abroad, the foreigners gained, on the whole, a larger freight than English vessels could do in the same time. English shipowners sought, therefore, to obtain fresh limitations on the foreigner, so as to raise their freights to an equality with those earned in the general market of the world. ”

“ Good, possibly, in its original intentions, this trade, from its earliest dawn, was made infamous by the desperate class of men engaged in it from its commencement, and it maintained its character for infamy, unredeemed by any civilising influences, even to our own time.
A privateer accustomed to plunder would naturally acknowledge no right of opinion on the part of those he captured: a slave was an article to be dealt with like any other article of commerce, and to be disposed of in any market where the highest price could be obtained. ”

“ He who, with Christopher Columbus, had presented a new world to his sovereign, died like him neglected, if not despised, and at last so thoroughly unknown, that England cannot point to the spot of earth where rests all that was mortal of one of her best and bravest seamen. ”

“ The keenest partisans for the unbounded liberty of commerce felt no scruple of conscience in depriving the poor Africans, who were only guilty of having black skins and woolly hair, of their liberty, in whatever part of the world they could be found; and on the east coast of Africa, where negroes were cheaper than elsewhere, the competition of the traders of various nations raised the price of human flesh. ”

“ But the public mind was so inflamed in the United States by stories of thousands of Americans forced to serve in the British Navy; of American ships upon the high seas deprived of their hands by British cruisers, and compelled to put into the nearest port for want of seamen to pursue the voyage; and of other outrages still more extraordinary and unpardonable, that, looking only to the alleged abuses of the right, their popular leaders went to the extreme of denying its existence altogether. ”

“ Although the opposition did not prevail, the influence which had been used delayed the departure of the expedition until April 1526, and the seeds of discontent had been so extensively sown among the fleet, that a mutiny on the coast of Brazil, not unlike what Columbus had encountered on his first great voyage of discovery, threatened the annihilation of the Spanish fleet. Cabot, like Columbus, when similarly situated, saw that his only safety lay in extreme boldness, for, like him, he belonged to that rare class of men whose powers unfold at trying moments. ”

“ Thus the Western nations, under the plea of peace and friendship, and on the pretence at first of only desiring to establish factories for the purposes of peaceful and mutually beneficial commerce, became lords of the East, and for centuries exercised a dominion founded on despotism and injustice over its native sovereigns. The king of Quiloa might remonstrate as he pleased, submission was his only course. ”

“ Such were the principles then hurled at England by Catherine of Russia, who placed herself at the head of an armed neutrality, consisting of Denmark, Sweden, and Russia. Lord North, for a while, evaded any direct reply to them; but the northern powers naturally found zealous supporters in the nations now at war with Great Britain. Thus the contemporary declarations of France, Spain, and the United States lauded the moderation and public spirit which Catherine had displayed, while England maintained her principles inviolate. ”

“ The whole of the exportable produce of the East and West Indies, and a large portion of that from South America, now came to the ports of Great Britain, either for consumption or re-exportation; and any effort of Bonaparte to exclude these necessary articles from the continent proved nearly, if not altogether abortive. England now, to all intents and purposes, obtained a monopoly, costly it is true, but she can never again hope to carry on hostilities with any of the great powers of Europe and bring, as it were, under her dominion at the same time all the material riches of the world. ”

“ Perhaps no branch of maritime commerce ever produced hardier or more alert seamen than that of the Northern coal trade. During her great naval engagements England looked to that trade more than to any other for the best, or at least the hardest and most daring seamen for her navy. Indeed, it afforded a supply of men who could go aloft in any weather and fight the guns, with the green sea frequently rolling through the port-holes. ”

“ But while the feelings of the people of the United States were becoming daily more hostile to Great Britain, the American government, under some strange delusion, insisted upon the sincerity of France in the early repeal of her decrees. Quiescent under the outrages committed by the French upon their merchantmen, they were furious against the English. Every little incident was seized upon to inflame the public mind against Great Britain. ”

“ But whatever motives may have governed their conduct, whether mere commercial interest, or a more broad national policy, it is beyond controversy that in the negotiations and language held throughout there was a marked partiality towards France and her ruler, and a corresponding coldness and animosity against England. This disposition of the United States to display subserviency to the French emperor, and their hostile temper towards Great Britain, daily increased, but it was not until 1812 that the long smouldering ashes of suppressed enmity broke out into open hostilities. ”

“ The people of Prussia, to a man, had risen to arms to deliver their fatherland from the grasp of their French oppressor, and the king, though dreading the ire of Napoleon, who could easily have purchased his neutrality at the time, felt conscious that it was now a question of life and death for him, and no longer hesitated. ”

“ The spirit of enterprise which had fitted out fleets of privateers was equally ready to adapt itself to more laudable, if not in every instance to more legitimate sources of gain, and, during the whole of the disreputable exploits and expeditions to which we have briefly alluded, the rage in England for commercial adventure had become quite as great as that which had a century before prevailed in Spain and Portugal. ”

“ England had now asserted the practical right to carry on her own over-sea trade in her own ships, and to obtain as much foreign trade as she could by her own industry and energy, and as this action was practically a defiance of the maritime supremacy of Holland, a struggle was evidently impending which could only be decided by an appeal to arms. But the Dutch amused the English Parliament with negotiations for a treaty, although in point of fact they had nothing to give as an equivalent for any concessions that England might make. ”

“ The discovery of a new world of vast extent is, however, too high an honour to be conferred on any one man. While the great Genoese navigator fully deserves the credit of having explored the mysteries of the Atlantic Ocean, and of having shown the existence of rich continental lands to the west, Sebastian Cabot is entitled to the honour of having been the first to discover that portion of those lands now constituting the United States of America ”

“ Indeed, men belonging to the best families in England then became lawless rovers, especially as one of them, Sir Thomas Seymour, had formed the idea of establishing a private sovereignty among the Scilly Islands, where, as on the coast of Ireland, there were numerous narrow channels affording safe and convenient rendezvous for any desperate cruiser, who levied war on his own account whenever he thought the government neglected its duty, or whenever, by a fortunate chance, richly laden vessels happened to cross his path. ”

“ As nothing less than the total annihilation of the American merchant navy was anticipated, it was pointed out to the mechanic that those numerous bodies connected with shipbuilding, the carpenter, the blacksmith, the sail-maker, the rope-maker, and others would of course all be thrown out of employment; their labour would be neither wanted nor paid for. ”

“ The experience of the interval from 1783 to 1791, when American trade was so much depressed, had not been lost upon keen and calm observers, and many able American writers incessantly pointed to the vast, rich, fertile uncultivated lands in the south and west of the Union, as the inexhaustible mine of wealth from which the future greatness and power of the States must be derived, and urged their countrymen to encourage and direct their efforts to that branch of domestic industry. ”

“ When cargo is coming in or going out he stands in the gangway to keep an account, while the second mate is in the hold with some of the crew, breaking out or stowing, he being responsible for the proper stowage and delivery of the cargo. When the master is on shore, the chief mate is necessarily commander of the ship for the time, and though the law will extend his power proportionably for cases of necessity, yet, except in instances which will not admit of delay, he must not attempt to exercise any unusual powers, but should refer everything to the master’s decision. ”

“ War, however, again harassed the people. France, the old enemy of England, now sought to pluck from her the laurels she had won from the Dutch, and to claim a maritime supremacy over both nations. Her naval force had now become so formidable, being augmented by numerous privateers, that it played havoc among the merchant vessels of Great Britain, destroying or capturing nearly the whole Smyrna fleet, consisting of many richly laden vessels, as also two of the English men-of-war which accompanied them. ”

“ Portuguese so as to destroy all English trade on the coast of Portugal, and had stimulated the action of the northern powers, by inspiring the Emperor Paul with an infatuation which could only succeed in men of weak minds like himself. The avowed aim of Bonaparte was to close every port in Europe against the merchant shipping of England, to combine the naval forces of Spain, Holland and France so as to make them act in concert, and, thus, if possible, to rescue the army he had left in Egypt. ”

“ Indeed the nobler Spaniards, who first peopled the tropical portion of the vast American continent and the West India Islands, were of opinion that, in the innocent and docile children of Africa might be found, if kindly treated, servants who would labour without repugnance, and who, while replacing the native Indians, would materially improve their own then wretched condition. The Spanish settlers therefore encouraged the exchange, and, as emigrants from other nations flocked in great numbers to the newly discovered West, the demand for African labour soon became enormous. ”

“ These measures, which are resorted to only in just retaliation of the barbarous system adopted by England, which assimilates its legislation to that of Algiers, shall cease to have any effect with respect to all nations who shall have the firmness to compel the English government to respect their flag. They shall continue to be vigorously in force as long as that government does not return to the principle of the law of nations, which regulates the relations of civilised states in a state of war. ”