small. In one of the most remarkable papers of that age,[1] Raleigh pointed out that the Dutch had engrossed the far greater part of the carrying trade of Europe. Our own ships, said he, in substance, lie still and decay, or else go to Newcastle for coals. The English send into Holland hardly fifty vessels during the course of a year, while the Hollanders send into England five or six hundred. To Elbing, Konigsberg, and Dantzick and the other cities in the East countries, the English annually dispatched but one hundred ships, the Dutch three thousand; the Dutch annually built one thousand vessels, of which a large number found lucrative employment in transporting English manufactured goods to the various peoples of Europe.
It is not remarkable that there should have existed among the English people, when Raleigh wrote this paper, a feeling of doubt as to their ability to compete with the Dutch even in the English carrying trade, when the point to which the goods were to be transported was a foreign country,[2] but when the place of destination was an English plantation, it was quite natural and just, and the event confirmed the view, that they should expect that English shipping would then have more chance of development, because it would be in the power of the English government to control the carrying trade of its
- ↑ Observations concerning the Trade and Commerce of England with the Dutch and other Foreign Nations, Anderson’s History of Commerce, vol. II, pp. 216-219.
- ↑ The superiority of the Dutch in all maritime affairs was regarded by many Englishmen with a feeling of shame on account of the total lack of timber in Holland, which rendered the supremacy of its people in maritime commerce all the more remarkable. “The mere mention of the advantage that they have,” exclaimed the author of Nova Britannia, “should make us blush and bind us (i.e. Englishmen) not to remain Inferior.”
