so much out of accord with the spirit of nations in that day. It is
chiefly noteworthy as the most striking, as well as one of the
earliest indications of the purpose of England to assert herself at
all risks upon the sea and the insult was offered under one of her
most timid kings to an ambassador immediately representing the bravest
and ablest of French sovereigns. This empty honor of the flag, a claim
insignificant except as the outward manifestation of the purpose of a
government, was as rigidly exacted under Cromwell as under the kings.
It was one of the conditions of peace yielded by the Dutch after their
disastrous war of 1654. Cromwell, a despot in everything but name, was
keenly alive to all that concerned England's honor and strength, and
did not stop at barren salutes to promote them. Hardly yet possessed
of power, the English navy sprang rapidly into a new life and vigor
under his stern rule. England's rights, or reparation for her wrongs,
were demanded by her fleets throughout the world,--in the Baltic, in
the Mediterranean, against the Barbary States, in the West Indies; and
under him the conquest of Jamaica began that extension of her empire,
by force of arms, which has gone on to our own days. Nor were equally
strong peaceful measures for the growth of English trade and shipping
forgotten. Cromwell's celebrated Navigation Act declared that all
imports into England or her colonies must be conveyed exclusively in
vessels belonging to England herself, or to the country in which the
products carried were grown or manufactured. This decree, aimed
specially at the Dutch, the common carriers of Europe, was resented
throughout the commercial world; but the benefit to England, in those
days of national strife and animosity, was so apparent that it lasted
long under the monarchy. A century and a quarter later we find Nelson,
before his famous career had begun, showing his zeal for the welfare
of England's shipping by enforcing this same act in the West Indies
against American merchant-ships. When Cromwell was dead, and Charles