fterwards
made vice-governor of Jamaica. From the time when the Spaniards threw
open their trade, and English seamen ceased to be delivered over to the
Inquisition, the English buccaneers ceased to be respectable characters
and gradually drifted into the pirates of later history, when under
their new conditions they produced their more questionable heroes, the
Kidds and Blackbeards. The French flibustiers continued long after--far
into the eighteenth century--some of them with commissions as
privateers, others as _forbans_ or unlicensed rovers, but still connived
at in Martinique.

Adventurers, buccaneers, pirates pass across the stage--the curtain
falls on them, and rises on a more glorious scene. Jamaica had become
the depot of the trade of England with the western world, and golden
streams had poured into Port Royal. Barbadoes was unoccupied when
England took possession of it, and never passed out of our hands; but
the Antilles--the Anterior Isles--which stand like a string of emeralds
round the neck of the Caribbean Sea, had been most of them colonised and
occupied by the French, and during the wars of the last century were the
objects of a never ceasing conflict between their fleets and ours. The
French had planted their language there, they had planted their religion
there, and the blacks of these islands generally still speak the French
patois and call themselves Catholics; but it was deemed essential to our
interests that the Antilles should be not French but English, and
Antigua, Martinique, St. Lucia, St. Vincent, and Grenada were taken and
retaken and taken again in a struggle perpetually renewed. When the
American colonies revolted, the West Indies became involved in the
revolutionary hurricane. France, Spain, and Holland--our three ocean
rivals--combined in a supreme effort to tear from us our Imperial power.
The opportunity was seized by Irish patriots to clamour for Irish
nationality, and by the English Radicals to demand liberty and the
rights of man. It was the most critical moment in later English history.
If we had yielded to peace on the terms which our enemies offered, and
the English Liberals wished us to accept, the star of Great Britain
would have set for ever.

The West Indies were then under the charge of Rodney, whose brilliant
successes had already made his name famous. He had done his country more
than yeoman's service. He had torn the Leeward Islands from the French.
He had punished the H