King hath one year with another employed in his navy since his coming,
hath not been above 3000 men, or at most 4000; and now having occasion
for 30,000, the remaining 26,000 _must be found out of the Trade of
the Nation_." Naturally. Where a nation of shopkeepers was
concerned it could hardly have been otherwise. They who go down to the
sea in ships and do business in great waters, returning laden with the
spoils of the commercial world, have perforce to render tribute unto
Caesar; but Mr. Commissioner Coventry little guessed, when he
enunciated his corollary with such nice precision, to what it was
destined to lead in the next hundred years or so.

Under the merciless exactions of the press-gang Trade did not,
however, prove the submissive thing that was wont to stand at its
doors and cry: "Will you buy? will you buy?" or to bow prospective
customers into its rich emporiums with unctuous rubbing of hands and
sauve words. Trade knew its power and determined to use it. "Look you!
my Lords Commissioners," cried Trade, truculently cocking its hat in
the face of Admiralty, "I have had enough. You have taken my butcher,
my baker, my candlestick-maker, nor have you spared that worthy youth,
the 'prentice who was to have wed my daughter. My coachman, the driver
of my gilded chariot, goes in fear of you, and as for my sedan-chair
man, he is no more found. My colliers, draymen, watermen, the
carpenters who build my ships and the mariners who sail them, the
ablest of these my necessary helpers sling their hammocks in your
fleet. You have crippled the printing of my Bible and the brewing of
my Beer, and I can bear no more. Protect me from my arch-enemy the
foreigner if you must and will, but not, my Lords Commissioners, by
such monstrous personal methods as these." "Your servant!" said
Admiralty, obsequious before the only power it feared--"your servant
to command!" and straightway set about finding a remedy for the evils