THE NEW WORLD; MEXICO AND PERU 261 were the private property of the Crown. No other European powers had at present come in competition with them. Further to the north the Cabots, Genoese in the employment of the English government, had discovered Labrador, probably before the Spaniards actually reached the American continent; but though voyages of exploration were made, there were no attempts at settlement. English and French sailors, however, both began to visit the Spanish settlements for trading purposes ; and before long the Spanish government imposed trade regula- tions on the colonies, with the direct object of excluding these interlopers. Neither French nor English were disposed to admit the right of Spaniards or Portuguese to shut them out of the New World altogether, or to recognise the validity of the laws which excluded them ; and hence there presently arose in the western seas something like a state of perpetual war, which in a strictly legal sense was plain piracy when England was nominally at peace with Spain, but was never regarded as such by any one except the aggrieved government.
