But it does seem hard on Raleigh, after having laboured in this
Guiana business for years, and after having spent his money in vain
attempts to deliver these Guianians from their oppressors. It is
hard, and he feels it so. He sees that he is not trusted; that, as
James himself confesses, his pardon is refused simply to keep a hold
on him; that, if he fails, he is ruined.

As he well asks afterwards, 'If the King did not think that Guiana
was his, why let me go thither at all? He knows that it was his by
the law of nations, for he made Mr. Harcourt a grant of part of it.
If it be, as Gondomar says, the King of Spain's, then I had no more
right to work a mine in it than to burn a town.' An argument which
seems to me unanswerable. But, says James, and others with him, he
was forbid to meddle with any country occupate or possessed by
Spaniards. Southey, too, blames him severely for not having told
James that the country was already settled by Spaniards. I can
excuse Southey, but not James, for overlooking the broad fact that
all England knew it, as I have shown, since 1594; that if they did
not, Gondomar would have taken care to tell them; and that he could
not go to Guiana without meddling with Spaniards. His former voyages
and publications made no secret of it. On the contrary, one chief
argument for the plan had been all through the delivery of the
Indians from these very Spaniards, who, though they could not conquer
them, ill-used them in every way: and in his agreement with the
Lords about the Guiana voyage in 1611, he makes especial mention of
the very place which will soon fill such a part in our story, 'San
Thome, where the Spaniards inhabit,' and tells the Lords whom to ask
as to the number of men who will be wanted 'to secure Keymish's
passage to the mine' against these very Spaniards. What can be more
clear, save to those who will not see?