Page:Craik History of British Commerce Vol 1.djvu/60

58 the territories of the petty land-sovereigns along the coasts of that sea; for their common origin formed no general or permanent bond between the two classes, in circumstances so nearly resembling those under which the various descriptions of wild beasts are thrown together in a forest. But now, that something of the strength of union and consolidation had been acquired by the northern kingdoms, they had become less easily assailable; and the captains of the piratical armaments began to look out for adventures and plunder farther from home. The coasts of England, of Scotland, of Ireland, and of France, became henceforth the chief scenes of their ravages. Nor had civilization yet advanced so far in any of the Scandinavian countries as to discountenance these expeditions. On the contrary, the Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish kings were no doubt well pleased to see their natural enemies and the most turbulent spirits among their subjects thus finding occupation elsewhere; and, as for the popular feeling on the subject, the old national custom of roaming the seas was still universally held to be among the most honourable of employments. Navigation can be cherished and promoted only by commerce or by war; it never has flourished in the absence of the former except under the nourishment and support afforded by the latter. It was the want of both war and commerce that brought about its decay and extinction among the Franks and Saxons, after their conquests of Gaul and Britain; it was preserved among the Danes through the habits and necessities of that predatory life upon which they were thrown for some centuries by the peculiar circumstances in which they were placed. The power of this third northern confederacy grew up during a period when the spirit of foreign conquest and settlement, generated among the barbarous nations by the dismemberment of the Roman empire, was still in full vigour, but when the means of satisfying it had been taken away in consequence of the previous occupation of Gaul, of Britain, of Spain, and of all the other Roman provinces, by those whose fortune it had been to be earlier in the movement. The Danes were in this way