Page:Craik History of British Commerce Vol 2.djvu/11

 HISTORY

OF

CHAPTER VII. FROM THE ACCESSION OF JAMES I. TO THE RESTORATION OF CHARLES II. A.D. 1603—1660

most authentic and comprehensive account we have of the foreign commerce of England at the commencement of the present period is contained in a discourse, or essay, drawn up by Sir Walter Raleigh, and originally presented by him, in manuscript, to James I. soon after his accession. The main object of this small treatise is to point out the circumstances to which the Dutch owed their commercial superiority, and to urge upon the English government the adoption of the same methods; but in pursuing this argument the author takes occasion to give a very full and minute delineation of the trade carried on by each country in all its branches. Some little allowance is perhaps to be made here and there for the bias of a mind occupied with and pleading for a particular object; but in general there is no reason to suppose that Raleigh's statements, the substance of which, in so far as they relate to his own country, we shall now proceed to extract and condense, are, to any material extent, overcharged.

The ordinary trade carried on at this time by the Dutch with England employed not fewer than five or six hundred Dutch ships, but not a tenth of that number of English. But, besides, whenever there was in England VOL. II. B