ew maritime Power from starting in the
Baltic was acted upon by Sweden and Denmark.

"Who knows not that the Emperor's attempt to get a seaport in
Pomerania weighed no less with the great Gustavus than any other
motive for carrying his arms even into the bowels of the house of
Austria? What befel, at the times of Charles Gustavus, the crown of
Poland itself, who, besides it being in those days by far the
mightiest of any of the northern Powers, had then a long stretch of
coast on, and some ports in, the Baltic? The Danes, though then in
alliance with Poland, would never allow them, even for their
assistance against the Swedes, to have a fleet in the Baltic, but
destroyed the Polish ships wherever they could meet them."

As to the maintenance of the balance of power between the established
maritime States of the Baltic, the tradition of British policy is no
less clear. "When the Swedish power gave us some uneasiness there by
threatening to crush Denmark," the honour of our country was kept up by
retrieving the then inequality of the balance of power.

The Commonwealth of England sent in a squadron to the Baltic which
brought on the treaty of Roskild (1658), afterwards confirmed at
Copenhagen (1660). The fire of straw kindled by the Danes in the times
of King William III. was as speedily quenched by George Rock in the
treaty of Copenhagen.

Such was the hereditary British policy.

"It never entered into the mind of the politicians of those times
in order to bring the scale again to rights, to find out the happy
_expedient of raising a third naval Power_ for framing a juster
balance in the Baltic.... Who has taken this counsel against Tyre,
the crowning city, whose merchants are princes, whose traffickers
are the honourables of the earth? _Ego autem neminem nomino, quare
irasci mihi nemo poterit, nisi qui ante de se noluerit confiteri._
Posterity will be under some difficulty to believe that this could
be the _work of any of the persons now in power_ ... that _we_ have
opened; _St. Petersburg to the Czar solely at our own expense, and
without any risk to him_...."

The safest line of policy would be to return to the treaty of Itolbowa,
and to suffer the Muscovite no longer "to nestle in the Baltic." Yet,
it may be said, that in "the present state of affairs" it would be
"difficult to retrieve the advantage