Page:History of India Vol 7.djvu/336

 278 APPENDIX I Turks— within the reach of English diplomacy and of English reprisals. When the Doge laid prohibitive cus- toms on our Levant trade, Elizabeth forbade the Vene- tian import into England of the raisins of Corinth and the wines of Candia, until the Adriatic Republic should take off its imposts. Cromwell had just given sharp proof to Spain and the Barbary Corsairs that they were both within range of his guns. As regards Turkey, the very year after James I granted a charter in per- petuity to the merchants of England in the Levant, it was found necessary to appoint an English envoy to the Grand Seignior, and to establish consuls within his dominions. International relations sprang up and eventually developed into a system of consular juris- diction for the protection of English subjects in the eastern Mediterranean. It is said that in 1685 the only English diplomatic agent with the title of ambassador resided at Constantinople, and was paid in part by the Turkey Company. But no statesman believed, in 1657, that the Moghul Empire could be called to a reckoning by English diplomacy or arms, or that the Common- wealth should maintain a permanent embassy at Agra, and a cordon of consuls around the Indian coast. The plea for a Regulated East India Company from the analogy of the Regulated Turkey Company proved to be no argument at all. The real evidence which confronted Cromwell lay in the history of the East India Company itself. Even before Elizabeth granted her charter, its founders had declared in 1599 " that the trade of the Indias being