THE JURIDICAL CONTROVERSIES 339 



that time and the pleas of Grotius had so much success are not 

 difficult to discover. The period was characterised by a great 

 expansion of commercial enterprise. The Western Powers of 

 Europe, and above all the United Provinces, were pushing into 

 every sea for the sake of traffic and gain. In some directions 

 the trading adventurers found their way barred by claims to 

 'mare clausum and monopoly of trade ; in other directions it 

 was open to them only under heavy burdens and aggravating 

 restrictions. The northern seas, in theory at least, were closed 

 to the whaling vessels engaged in what was then a most valu- 

 able business ; and commerce and fishing within them were per- 

 mitted only under irksome conditions. The passage through 

 the Sound into the Baltic was subjected to high dues by Den- 

 mark; Venice claimed dominion in the Adriatic and levied 

 imposts for the right of navigation there, and Genoa followed 

 her example in the Ligurian Sea. But it was not so much the 

 claim of Denmark to the sovereignty of the northern seas, or 

 the rights asserted by Venice in the Adriatic, that led to the 

 outburst for the freedom of the sea and of commercial inter- 

 course at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Except 

 with regard to English traffic with Iceland and Norway and the 

 fishing there, more or less regulated by treaties, the Scan- 

 dinavian claim at this time was not of great practical import- 

 ance ; and the dominion of Venice over the Adriatic was 

 generally regarded as beneficial on the whole, by interposing a 

 powerful barrier to the further extension of the Turkish empire 

 in Europe, and by facilitating the suppression of pirates and 

 Saracens. 1 It was the extravagant pretensions of Spain and 

 Portugal to a monopoly of navigation and commerce with the 

 New World and the East Indies that constituted the great 

 obstacle to the new spirit of commercial enterprise. Founding 

 their title on the Bulls of the Pope, and the right of discovery, 

 conquest, and prior occupation, they arrogated to themselves 

 the exclusive sovereignty of the great oceans which were the 

 pathways to these immense regions, the Atlantic, the Indian 

 Ocean, and parts of the Pacific. Thus, as Grotius remarked, 

 the whole Ocean except a little was to remain under the control 

 of two nations, and all the other nations of the earth were to 

 content themselves with the remnant. 



1 Meadows, Observation*, p, 3. Raleigh, A Ditcourie on the Invention of Shipt. 



