Page:Craik History of British Commerce Vol 1.djvu/62

60 ancestral islets and strips of sea-coast for broader domains in a sunnier clime. By means of these expeditions the pressure and uneasiness occasioned by the opposition between the old piratical system and the new order of things that was now growing up in the Scandinavian kingdoms were at once relieved; and, while occupation and settlements were found for the more active and adventurous who chose to abandon their native country, more room was also made, and more quiet secured, for those that remained behind.

By these bold sea-captains and their crews was a great part of England taken possession of and occupied; and thus, a second time, did the country receive an accession of the kind of population most appropriate to it as an island,—a race of navigating spirit and habits. The Normans also, we may anticipate so far as just to remark, were, before they won their settlements here and in France, pirates as well as the Danes and the Saxons; in fact they were merely a division of the Danish vikingr and their companies. So that, of the several races that were eventually mingled together to form the English people, no one had to be gradually turned towards maritime affairs by the force of the new circumstances in the midst of which it was placed; all brought along with them an old familiarity with the sea, on which they had in fact lived, and conquered, and maintained dominion, before they had ever made good any footing for themselves upon land. Notwithstanding all this, however, we find each race, as soon as it has established itself in the country, almost wholly abandoning the former theatre of its exploits, and attaching itself to the land as exclusively as if the sea had been left a thousand miles behind. We cannot discover that either the previous navigating habits of the Saxons and Danes who successively settled in Britain, or the natural advantages of their new position, prompted them to any considerable efforts of commercial enterprise, after they had lost the motive which had originally impelled them to the sea. Nay, as we have already observed, the ships in which, and through which, they had made their conquests, were abandoned by them even as