sea commerce, aiming as they did to make England a depôt for foreign produce, and her ships the carriers by sea for the merchants of other nations as well as their own. "For we must take care," remarks the Company in one of those letters to its agents, "to utter good quantitie of wares, especially the commodities of our realme, although we afford a good peny-worth to the intent to make others that have traded thither, wearie, and so to bring ourselves and commodities in estimation, and likewise to procure and have the chiefe commodities of that country in our hands as waxe and such others, that other nations may be served by us and at our hands."[1]
It was by these means that England obtained her mercantile pre-eminence, achieving her maritime superiority by such methods rather than by any complicated scheme of legislative enactments, and in this she was assuredly far more indebted to the discoveries and wise policy of Sebastian Cabot, than to the so-called "celebrated Navigation Laws of Oliver Cromwell," a hundred years afterwards. Barrow in his history frankly owns that Cabot's knowledge and experience, combined with his zeal and penetration, were the means, not only of extending the foreign commerce of England, but of keeping alive the "spirit of enterprise which even in his lifetime was crowned with success, and which ultimately led to the most happy results for the nation";[2] and Campbell observes "that with equal justice it may be said of Sebastian Cabot, that he was the author of our maritime strength, and opened the way to those improvements
