Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 2).djvu/199

 But apart from other considerations, the maintenance of the power of Holland may be ascribed in great measure to the care with which she always preserved her navy, so necessary in those times, if not to create, at least to maintain her commercial and maritime prosperity. While Spain and Portugal, either from internal corruptions, the supineness of their rulers, or national decay, neglected their navies, Holland zealously maintained a predominating naval force at sea, and was thereby enabled, if not to perpetuate her naval greatness, at least to retard its decline and fall. To her own people and to every foreigner who sought an asylum in her territories, she granted the fullest religious and political freedom, and though it is difficult to trace any special free-trade enactments, as regards her navigation, to which her maritime success can be ascribed, abundant reasons for that success may be seen in her policy of non-intervention with the affairs of other nations, and in the facilities she afforded for the importation of every material suitable for ship-*building purposes, and of the wool for her manufactures, which the English people preferred parting with to working it up at home. But, above all, the Dutch owed their success in maritime pursuits to many of the ancient laws of England, which, as we have seen in numerous instances, actually forbad any English exports in home bottoms, thus enabling the Dutch to grasp and keep to themselves large and valuable portions of the carrying trade, and thus laying the foundation of their wealth and greatness.

When the English were at last awakened by the advice of Sir Walter Raleigh and other writers