nscious and open superiority is not readily
effaced by ordinances, especially when vanity is a conspicuous trait
in national character; and many years later Montesquieu taught that it
is contrary to the spirit of monarchy that the nobility should engage
in trade.

In Holland there was a nobility; but the State was republican in name,
allowed large scope to personal freedom and enterprise, and the
centres of power were in the great cities. The foundation of the
national greatness was money--or rather wealth. Wealth, as a source of
civic distinction, carried with it also power in the State; and with
power there went social position and consideration. In England the
same result obtained. The nobility were proud; but in a representative
government the power of wealth could be neither put down nor
overshadowed. It was patent to the eyes of all; it was honored by all;
and in England, as well as Holland, the occupations which were the
source of wealth shared in the honor given to wealth itself. Thus, in
all the countries named, social sentiment, the outcome of national
characteristics, had a marked influence upon the national attitude
toward trade.

In yet another way does the national genius affect the growth of sea
power in its broadest sense; and that is in so far as it possesses the
capacity for planting healthy colonies. Of colonization, as of all
other growths, it is true that it is most healthy when it is most
natural. Therefore colonies that spring from the felt wants and
natural impulses of a whole people will have the most solid
foundations; and their subsequent growth will be surest when they are
least trammelled from home, if the people have the genius for
independent action. Men of the past three centuries have keenly felt
the value to the mother-country of colonies as outlets for the home
products and as a nursery for commerce and shipping; but efforts at
colonization have not had the same general origin, nor have different
systems all had the same success. The efforts of statesmen, however
far-seeing and careful, have not been able to supply the lack of
strong natural impulse; nor can the most minute regulation from home
produce as good results as a happier neglect, when the germ of
self-development is found in the national character. There has been no
greater display of wisdom in the national administration of successful
colonies than in that of unsuccessful. Perhaps there has been even
less. If elaborate sy