Page:Karl Marx - Secret Diplomatic History of the Eighteenth Century (1899).djvu/98

 94 The same policy of preventing a new maritime Power from starting in the Baltic was acted upon by Sweden and Denmark.

As to the maintenance of the balance of power between the established maritime States of the Baltic, the tradition of British policy is no less clear. "When the Swedish power gave us some uneasiness there by threatening to crush Denmark," the honour of our country was kept up by retrieving the then inequality of the balance of power.

The Commonwealth of England sent in a squadron to the Baltic which brought on the treaty of Roskild (1658), afterwards confirmed at Copenhagen (1660). The fire of straw kindled by the Danes in the times of King William III. was as speedily quenched by George Rock in the treaty of Copenhagen.

Such was the hereditary British policy.

The safest line of policy would be to return to the treaty of Itolbowa, and to suffer the Muscovite no longer "to nestle