ounsel of his prudence, feigning to be satisfied, while his
wound was all the time smarting and incurable. Henry the Great
had to practise moderation on this occasion; but with the
resolve another time to sustain the rights of his crown by the
force that, with the aid of time, he should be able to put upon
the sea."

This act of unpardonable insolence, according to modern ideas, was not
so much out of accord with the spirit of nations in that day. It is
chiefly noteworthy as the most striking, as well as one of the
earliest indications of the purpose of England to assert herself at
all risks upon the sea; and the insult was offered under one of her
most timid kings to an ambassador immediately representing the
bravest and ablest of French sovereigns. This empty honor of the flag,
a claim insignificant except as the outward manifestation of the
purpose of a government, was as rigidly exacted under Cromwell as
under the kings. It was one of the conditions of peace yielded by the
Dutch after their disastrous war of 1654. Cromwell, a despot in
everything but name, was keenly alive to all that concerned England's
honor and strength, and did not stop at barren salutes to promote
them. Hardly yet possessed of power, the English navy sprang rapidly
into a new life and vigor under his stern rule. England's rights, or
reparation for her wrongs, were demanded by her fleets throughout the
world,--in the Baltic, in the Mediterranean, against the Barbary
States, in the West Indies; and under him the conquest of Jamaica
began that extension of her empire, by force of arms, which has gone
on to our own days. Nor were equally strong peaceful measures for the
growth of English trade and shipping forgotten. Cromwell's celebrated
Navigation Act declared that all imports into England or her colonies
must be conveyed exclusively in vessels belonging to England herself,
or to the country in which the products carried were grown or
manufactured. This decree, aimed specially at the Dutch, the common
carriers of Europe, was resented throughout the commercial world; but
the benefit to England, in those days of national strife and
animosity, was so apparent that it lasted long under the monarchy. A
century and a quarter later we find Nelson, before his famous career
had begun, showing his zeal for the welfare of England's shipping by
enforcing this same act in the West Indies against American
merchant-ships. When Cromwell was