Page:Historical Lectures and Addresses.djvu/250

 their own resources, they strained every nerve to make the most of such advantages as they possessed, and to use every opportunity of securing others. Then, for the first time, did they fully appreciate the benefits of their geographical position, and set to work to make the most of them. Commerce, industry, seamanship, adventure, all assumed those forms with which we have ever since been familiar. The modern Englishman came into definite existence—not different from his ancestors, but the same—endowed only with greater self-consciousness, because compelled to adapt himself to larger problems. Forced into conflict with the power which claimed to possess the New World, he found himself, to his own surprise, superior in all the qualities which betokened lasting success. With this discovery came an exhilarating sense of a national destiny, a foremost place in the world's affairs, which has remained with England ever since.

All this has been so well set forth by the two illustrious men who lately held the chairs of history at Oxford and Cambridge that I need not dwell upon it. But I wish to prove the permanence of the type of English character; and I can best do so by telling you the story of an Elizabethan Englishman, which I take almost at random. It may serve to show that the expansion of England did not arise from any policy on the part of English governments, but that our international relations are the result of the spirit of commercial adventure, which animated the English people as soon as the events of the sixteenth century afforded an opportunity.