Page:Craik History of British Commerce Vol 1.djvu/63

Rh of protection; they had served their turn in aggressive warfare, but in the defensive warfare that followed their employment was not thought of, till after long and disastrous experience of the insufficiency of other military means. Such being the case, we need not wonder that commercial navigation was neglected. The navigating spirit, in fact, will not of itself create commerce; it appears to have been usually rather the commercial spirit that has taught a people navigation, where it has not been taught by war; and even war does not teach it in the effective manner that commerce does, as we may see at once by comparing the Saxons or the Danes with the Phoenicians. The latter had no doubt been a commercial long before they became a navigating, a discovering, a colonizing, and a civilizing people. In the same manner it is their commercial habits, growing out of their permanent geographical position, and not their use and wont of maritime warfare, that has made the English, the descendants of these old Saxons and Danes, the great lords of the sea, planters of nations, and diffusers of civilization in the modern world.

But a power like this can only grow up under a favourable state of circumstances in the world generally, or throughout a large portion of it. The commercial empire of the ancient Phoenicians was reared during the most flourishing period of the early civilization of the east; the commercial empire of modern Britain has in like manner arisen in the midst of the later civilization of the west. In the rude and turbulent ages that followed the overthrow of the Roman power in Europe, the existence of an extensive commerce in any hands was impossible. Almost continual wars everywhere, either between one people and another, or between two factions of the same people, or, where there was any temporary relaxation of war, the still more brutifying effects of misgovernment and oppression, left no time, no inclination, and no means for carrying on any considerable commerce. The great mass of the people were in all countries sunk in ignorance and in poverty; their