bolder man. It is a pity that anyone was ever found bold enough
to do it.

Walpole's policy endured for a quarter of a century. He abandoned
it only after a bitter struggle in which he was attacked as
sacrificing the national honor for the sake of peace. Spain was
an easy mark for those who wished to arouse the warlike spirit.
She still persecuted and burned heretics, a great cause of
offense. in Protestant Britain, and she was rigorous in excluding
foreigners from trading with her colonies. To be the one
exception in this policy of exclusion was the privilege enjoyed
by Britain. When the fortunes of Spain were low in 1713, she had
been forced not merely to cede Gibraltar but also to give to the
British the monopoly of supplying the Spanish colonies with negro
slaves and the right to send one ship a year to trade at Porto
Bello in South America. It seems a sufficiently ignoble bargain
for a great nation to exact: the monopoly of carrying and selling
cargoes of black men and the right to send a single ship yearly
to a Spanish colony. We can hardly imagine grave diplomats of our
day haggling over such terms. But the eighteenth century was not
the twentieth. From the treaty the British expected amazing
results. The South Sea Company was formed to carry on a vast
trade with South America. One ship a year could, of course, carry
little, but the ships laden with negroes could smuggle into the
colonies merchandise and the one trading ship could be and was
reloaded fraudulently from lighters so that its cargo was
multiplied manyfold. Out of the belief in huge profits from this
trade with its exaggerated visions of profit grew in 1720 the
famous South Sea Bubble which inaugurated a period of frantic
speculation in England. Worthless shares in companies formed for