THE EXPAASION OF ENGLAND 253 



are familiiir with the many efforts in the years before that to i)ush 

 Englisli trade into the East remember of the founding of the Muscovy 

 Company in 1555 and tlie amazing stories tokl by adventurous English- 

 men wlio i)ushed through Russia and Persia and so found a way to 

 the East. Fr(.)m papers wliich Sir Francis Drake cai)tured from 

 Spanish ships, lie learned for Enghand the metiiods of a different trad- 

 ing system with India; but it was not until that last day of the cen- 

 tury that the East India Company was actuall}' founded. Some may 

 remember the stor}' of the first little fleet. In Malakka Strait the 

 three or four ships fell in with a great Portuguese ship and fight 

 was at once opened. It was the habit in that day to oi)en fight with 

 almost an}^ shij) that had plunder. It Avas in 1601. almost a score of 

 years l)efore Bradford, Brewster, and Carver sailed from Plymouth 

 near by. that this first East India Company's fleet sailed from Tor 

 Bay — the place, it is worth remembering, where, in 1688, a king was 

 to land in England from Holland to supplant the last of the race of 

 Stuarts. We see the beginning, in that little piece of piracy, as we 

 should call it, in Malakka Strait, of the East India Comin\ny's "work. 



THE TWO CONTRADICTORY ELEMENTS OF ENGLISH EXPANSION — THE SPIRIT 

 OF LAW^LESS ADVENTURE AiND PIRACY AND THE LOVE OF FREEDOM 



In these two instances — in the silent, unobserved coming of the men 

 of Plymouth, an event calculated, as our poet has truly said, to work 

 a revolution hardly second to that wrought b}^ the men who went uj) 

 out of Eg3'pt, and in the ])iracy of the East India Company — we have 

 an illustration of the two Ibrces and qualities wliich we have to keep 

 in mind as we survey the great work of English expansion, the growth 

 of the English empire in the wuirld. A great race, indeed, is this 

 English race — the best race in the world, it seems to me — but a race 

 wliose blood has ofttimes been altogether too red, and which, in the 

 great fight for freedom, has itself always had to fight with the bad 

 elements in its midst — those elements so inconsiderate of the rights 

 of other men, which have so often brought disgrace upon the English 

 race and whicli every one of us should always remember with shame 

 and with misgivings and apprehension. Tiiese two strains we find 

 running side by side in all this great histor\\ We find in the era of 

 colonization the H[)irit of lawless adventure and piracy running side 

 by side with the love of freedom and the devotion to godliness. Our 

 l)<)et has said again of the Puritan colonists, tlit- men who came to 



