Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 3.djvu/627

] at fourteen years' purchase, its then estimated worth, it was £254,000,000. As to the mercantile shipping of the country, old and experienced merchants all agreed that its tonnage in 1688 was nearly double what it was in 1666. Sir William Petty, in his "Political Arithmetic," published in 1676, states that, within the previous forty years, the houses in London had doubled themselves; the coal trade from Newcastle had quadrupled itself, being then 80,000 tons yearly; the Guinea and American trades had grown up from next to nothing to 40,000 tons of shipping; the customs were tripled; the postage of letters increased from one to twenty; the whole income of government, in short, was trebled; and the number and splendour of coaches, equipages, and household furniture were wonderfully increased.

Medal exhibiting a Man-of-war (time of Charles II.) Struck in commemoration of the appointment of James Duke, of York, as Lord High Admiral.

These effects were surely no results of the wise measures of such monarchs as Charles and James; they were traceable, as clearly as light to the sun, to the bold and able heads of the Long Parliament and commonwealth; to their victories over the enemies and rivals of the nation, and to the able regulations which they had made in all quarters for the honourable maintenance of our name and the prosperity of our commerce. What such men as Charles and James did may be seen by examining the condition of what fell under their own management. What the nation at large did by its native energy we have just seen; what these monarchs did let us now sec. The royal navy, in 1666, amounted only to 62,594 tons; but in 1688, the last year of Charles, it amounted to 103,558 tons; and, though it fell off a little under James, in 1688, the last year of James, it still reached 101,892 tons. This looks admirable on the surface; but it is necessary to look under the surface, and then we perceive a marvellous difference. The nation had become justly proud of its navy, which had destroyed the great Armada, and, under Blake, had put down the supremacy of Holland and Spain at sea; and though the commons were averse to trusting Charles II. with money, after they saw that it all went to concubines, gamblers, and parasites, they were never appealed to on the subject of the navy in vain. When Danby was minister, they voted at once £600,000 for the building of thirty new men-of-war. On the evidence of Pepys, the secretary of the admiralty, we have it, that scarcely any of this magnificent array of ships were fit for use. The very thirty new vessels for which the £600,000 had been voted had been built of such villanousvillainous [sic] timber that they were absolutely unseaworthy; and the rest were so rotten and worm-eaten that they would have sunk if they were carried out of port. The same testimony was borne by the French ambassador, Bonrepaure, who, when Charles made a bluster as if he would go to sea, in 1686, examined our fleet, and reported to his government that it need not trouble itself about the English navy, for that both ships and men were merely nominal. In fact, the money which should have repaired the ships and paid the officers and men was gone the way of all Charles's money; and we have in our past chapters shown Pepys pursued in the streets by swarms of starving sailors, who demanded the redemption of their tickets; shoals of them lay in the streets, without food or means of procuring a shelter; many of them perished of hunger, and some officers are said to have shared the same fate. The whole was one most shameful scene of waste of the public money, neglect of vessels and of men, of utter indolence en the part of the crown, and consequent negligence on the part of the authorities; of scandalous corruption in many of them, and knavery and peculation in contractors. Such was the state of things that, in 1667, or seven years after the commonwealth, the Dutch, under De Ruyter, entered the Thames, destroyed the fortifications at Sheerness, took and burned some of our largest ships, and