ENGLAND. 169 



tence eKtremely populous, the number of inhabitants being in 

 ne former, in 1-801, 73,670, and in the latter 31,314. 



No nation in the world has such dock-yards, and all conveniences 

 for construction and repairs oi the royal navy, as Portsmouth, the 

 most regular fortification in England, Plymouth (by far the best dock- 

 yard) Chatham, Woolwich, and Deptford. The Royal Hospital at 

 Greenwich, for superannuated seamen, is scarcely exceeded by any 

 royal palace : for its magnificence and expence. 



Commerce and manufactures. ...It is well known that commerce 

 and manufactures have raised the English to be the first and most 

 powerful people in the world. Historical reviews, on this head, would 

 be tedious. It is sufficient then to say, that it was not till the reign 

 of Elizabeth that England began to feel her true weight in' the scale 

 of commerce. She planned some settlements in America, particularly 

 Virginia, but left the expence attending them to be defrayed by her 

 subjects ; and indeed she was too parsimonious to carry her own no- 

 tions of trade into execution. James I, entered upon great and be- 

 neficial schemes for the English trade. The East-India company 

 owes to him their success and existence ; and British America saw 

 her most flourishing colonies rise under hini and his family. The 

 spirit of commerce went hand in hand with that of liberty ; and though 

 the Stuarts were not friendly to the latter, yet, during the reigns of 

 the princes of that family, the trade of the nation was greatly increas- 

 ed. It is not intended to follow commerce through all her fluctua- 

 tions, but enly to give a general representation of the commercial in- 

 terest of the nation. 



The present system of English politics may properly be said to 

 have taken rise in the reign of queen Elizabeth. At that time the 

 protestant religion was established, which naturally allied us to the 

 reformed states, and made all the popish powers our enemies. 



We began in the same reign to extend our trade, by which it be^ 

 came necessary for us also to watch the commercial progress of our 

 neighbours, and, if not to incommode and obstruct their traffic, to 

 hinder them from impairing ours. 



We then likewise settled colonies in America, which was become 

 the great scene of European ambition ; for, seeing with what trea- 

 sures the Spaniards were annually enriched from Mexico and Peru, 

 every nation imagined that an American conquest or plantation would 

 certainly fill the mother-country with gold and silver. 



The discoveries of new 1'egions, which were then every day made, 

 the profit of remote traffic, and the necessity of long voyages, pro- 

 duced, in a few years, a great multiplication of shipping. The sea 

 was considered as the wealthy element ; and, by degrees, a new kind 

 of sovereignty arose, called naval dominion. 



As the chief trade of Europe, so the chief maritime power, was 

 at first in the hands of the Portuguese and Spaniards, who, by a com- 

 pact to which the consent of other princes was not asked, had divided 

 the newly-discovered countries between them: but the crown, of 

 Portugal having fallen to the king of Spain, or being seized by him, 

 he was master of the shipping of the two nations, with which he kept 

 all the coasts of Europe in alarm, till the armada he had raised at a 

 vast expence for the conquest of England was destroyed ; which pat 

 a stop, and almost an end, to the naval power of the Spaniards. 



At this time the Dutch, who were oppressed by the Spaniards, and 

 feared yet greater evils than thev felt, resolved no longer to endure 



Vol. I. Z 



