antarctic, while it was deemed certain that there were many lands,
lighted by the Southern Cross, awaiting the footsteps of the fortunate
European discoverer. What was a coasting-trade with Spain compared with
this boundless career of adventure? Now that the world's commerce, since
the discovery of America and the passage around the Cape of Good Hope,
had become oceanic and universal, was the nation which took the lead on
blue water to go back to the creeping land-locked navigation of the
ancient Greeks and Phoenicians? If the East India Company, in whose womb
was empire, were now destroyed, it would perish with its offspring for
ever. There would be no regeneration at a future day. The Company's
ships too were a navy in themselves, as apt for war as for trade. This
the Spaniards and Portuguese had already learned to their cost. The
merchant-traders to Spain would be always in the power of Spain, and at
any favourable moment might be seized by Spain. The Spanish monopoly in
the East and West was the great source of Spanish power, the chief cause
of the contempt with, which the Spanish monarchy looked down upon other
nations. Let those widely expanded wings be clipped, and Spain would
fall from her dizzy height. To know what the States ought to refuse the
enemy, it was only necessary to observe what he strenuously demanded, to
ponder the avowed reason why he desired peace. The enemy was doing his
best to damage the commonwealth; the States were merely anxious to
prevent injury to themselves and to all the world; to vindicate for
themselves, and for all men, the common use of ocean, land, and sky.

A nation which strove to shut up the seas, and to acquire a monopoly
of the world's trade, was a pirate, an enemy of mankind. She was as
deserving of censure as those who created universal misery in time
of famine, by buying up all the corn in order to enrich themselves.
According to the principles of the ancients, it was legitimate to make
war upon such States as closed their own ports to foreign intercourse.