wth above described. Many were more formal, and
purely political, in their conception and founding, the act of the
rulers of the people rather than of private individuals; but the
trading-station with its after expansion, the work simply of the
adventurer seeking gain, was in its reasons and essence the same as
the elaborately organized and chartered colony. In both cases the
mother-country had won a foothold in a foreign land, seeking a new
outlet for what it had to sell, a new sphere for its shipping, more
employment for its people, more comfort and wealth for itself.

The needs of commerce, however, were not all provided for when safety
had been secured at the far end of the road. The voyages were long
and dangerous, the seas often beset with enemies. In the most active
days of colonizing there prevailed on the sea a lawlessness the very
memory of which is now almost lost, and the days of settled peace
between maritime nations were few and far between. Thus arose the
demand for stations along the road, like the Cape of Good Hope, St.
Helena, and Mauritius, not primarily for trade, but for defence and
war; the demand for the possession of posts like Gibraltar, Malta,
Louisburg, at the entrance of the Gulf of St. Lawrence,--posts whose
value was chiefly strategic, though not necessarily wholly so.
Colonies and colonial posts were sometimes commercial, sometimes
military in their character; and it was exceptional that the same
position was equally important in both points of view, as New York
was.

In these three things--production, with the necessity of exchanging
products, shipping, whereby the exchange is carried on, and colonies,
which facilitate and enlarge the operations of shipping and tend to
protect it by multiplying points of safety--is to be found the key to
much of the history, as well as of the policy, of nations bordering
upon the sea. The policy has varied both with the spirit of the age
and with the character and clear-sightedness of the rulers; but the
history of the seaboard nations has been less determined by the
shrewdness and foresight of governments than by conditions of
position, extent, configuration, number and character of their
people,--by what are called, in a word, natural conditions. It must
however be admitted, and will be seen, that the wise or unwise action
of individual men has at certain periods had a great modifying
influence upon the growth of sea power in the broad sense, which
i