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 send thither about three thousand ships, trading with every city and port and town, making their purchases at better rates than we do on account of the difference of coin." "The Hollanders," he continues, "send into France, Spain, Portugal, and Italy, from the east kingdoms, passing through the Sound yearly, with Baltic produce, about two thousand merchant ships, and we have none in that course. They traffick into every city and port around about this land with five or six hundred ships yearly, and we, chiefly, to three towns in their country and with forty ships; the Dutch trade to every port and town in France, and we only to five or six." Sir Walter estimated, that the Low Countries at the time he wrote (1603-4) possessed as many vessels of all sorts as eleven kingdoms of Christendom, including England; that they built one thousand ships annually, and "yet have not a tree in their whole country;" and that all their home products might be carried in a hundred ships. Nor does his complaint end here. He alleges that "our Russian trade was going to ruin," and that, though for seventy years the English had carried on a very considerable commercial intercourse with Moscow, they had only four vessels engaged in that trade in the year 1600, and only "two or three" in 1602, whereas the Hollanders, who, about twenty years previously, had only two ships in the trade, had now increased the number of their vessels to thirty or forty, and were still increasing.

Making every allowance for the spirit of exaggeration adopted, doubtless with the laudable intention of inciting English merchants and ship-*owners to greater exertions, "so that our ships and