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Page 14
In the region here immediately under consideration, Great Britain
entered the contest under conditions of serious disadvantage. The
glorious burst of maritime and colonial enterprise which marked the
reign of Elizabeth, as the new era dawned when the country recognized
the sphere of its true greatness, was confronted by the full power of
Spain, as yet outwardly unshaken, in actual tenure of the most
important positions in the Caribbean and the Spanish Main, and
claiming the right to exclude all others from that quarter of the
world. How brilliantly this claim was resisted is well known; yet, had
they been then in fashion, there might have been urged, to turn
England from the path which has made her what she is, the same
arguments that now are freely used to deter our own country from even
accepting such advantages as are ready to drop into her lap. If it be
true that Great Britain's maritime policy now is imposed to some
extent by the present necessities of the little group of islands which
form the nucleus of her strength, it is not true that any such
necessities first impelled her to claim her share of influence in the
world, her part in the great drama of nations. Not for such reasons
did she launch out upon the career which is perhaps the noblest yet
run by any people. It then could have been said to her, as it now is
said to us, "Why go beyond your own borders? Within them you have what
suffices for your needs and those of your population. There are
manifold abuses within to be corrected, manifold miseries to be
relieved. Let the outside world take care of itself. Defend yourself,
if attacked; being, however, always careful to postpone preparation to
the extreme limit of imprudence. 'Sphere of influence,' 'part in the
world,' 'national prestige,'--there are no such things; or if there
be, they are not worth fighting for." What England would have been,
had she so reasoned, is matter for speculation; that the world would
have been poorer may be confidently affirmed.
As the strength of Spain waned apace during the first half of the
seventeenth century, the external efforts of Great Britain also
slackened through the rise of internal troubles, which culminated in
the Great Rebellion, and absorbed for the time all the energies of the
people. The momentum acquired under Drake, Raleigh, and their
associates was lost, and an occasion, opportune through the exhaustion
of the great enemy, Spain, passed unimproved. But, though thus
temporarily checked, the national tendency remained, and quickly
resumed its sway when Cromwell's mighty hand had composed the
disorders of the Commonwealth. His clear-sighted statesmanship, as
well as the immediate necessities of his internal policy, dictated the
strenuous assertion by sea of Great Britain's claims, not only to
external respect, which he rigorously exacted, but also to her due
share in influencing the world outside her borders. The nation quickly
responded to his proud appeal, and received anew the impulse upon the
road to sea power which never since has been relaxed. To him were due
the measures--not, perhaps, economically the wisest, judged by modern
lights, but more than justified by the conditions of his times--which
drew into English hands the carrying trade of the world. The glories
of the British navy as an organized force date also from his short
rule; and it was he who, in 1655, laid a firm basis for the
development of the country's sea power in the Caribbean, by the
conquest of Jamaica, from a military standpoint the most decisive of
all single positions in that sea for the control of the Isthmus. It is
true that the successful attempt upon this island resulted from the
failure of the leaders to accomplish Cromwell's more immediate purpose
of reducing Santo Domingo,--that in so far the particular fortunate
issue was of the nature of an accident; but this fact serves only to
illustrate more emphatically that, when a general line of policy,
whether military or political, is correctly chosen upon sound
principles, incidental misfortunes or disappointments do not frustrate
the conception. The sagacious, far-seeing motive, which prompted
Cromwell's movement against the West Indian possessions of Spain, was
to contest the latter's claim to the monopoly of that wealthy region;
and he looked upon British extension in the islands as simply a
stepping-stone to control upon the adjacent continent. It is a
singular commentary upon the blindness of historians to the true
secret of Great Britain's rise among the nations, and of the eminent
position she so long has held, that writers so far removed from each
other in time and characteristics as Hume and the late J.R. Green
should detect in this far-reaching effort of the Protector, only the
dulled vision of "a conservative and unspeculative temper misled by
the strength of religious enthusiasm." "A statesman of wise political
genius," according to them, would have fastened his eyes rather upon
the growing power of France, "and discerned the beginning of that
great struggle for supremacy" which was fought out under Louis XIV.
But to do so would have been only to repeat, by anticipation, the
fatal error of that great monarch, which forever forfeited for France
the control of the seas, in which the surest prosperity of nations is
to be found; a mistake, also, far more ruinous to the island kingdom
than it was to her continental rival, bitter though the fruits thereof
have been to the latter. Hallam, with clearer insight, says: "When
Cromwell declared against Spain, and attacked her West Indian
possessions, there was little pretence, certainly, of justice, but not
by any means, as I conceive, the impolicy sometimes charged against
him. So auspicious was his star, that the very failure of that
expedition obtained a more advantageous possession for England than
all the triumphs of her former kings." Most true; but because his star
was despatched in the right direction to look for fortune,--by sea,
not by land.
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