[27]. E. Schuyler’s “Peter the Great,” vol. ii. p. 592.
[28]. “The separation of the Church of England from that of Rome, formally accomplished under Henry VIII., was a political and legal rather than a religious reformation. The doctrinal changes followed under Edward VI. and Elizabeth” (Taswell-Langmead’s “English Constitutional History,” p. 399).
[29]. “In the sixteenth century all Europe was aghast at the designs of Philip II. of Spain. He had the great mines of the New World, or at least levied a heavy tax on their produce. He seemed to be possessed of inexhaustible riches. He was baffled, beaten, made bankrupt by the Dutch, in whose country there was not an ounce of natural gold or silver, who got all their money by trade, were rapidly becoming the richest nation of Europe when Philip had ruined Spain and brought down the Genoese traders, on his declaring himself bankrupt” (J. E. Thorold Rogers’s, “The Economic Interpretation of History,” p. 95).
[30]. “Till this time our merchants were struggling to gain a footing and open up trade between England and different quarters of the globe, and endeavouring to prove that the encouragement of trade was for the royal honour and benefit ... and their interests coincided with the national ambition of out-doing the Dutch, who would not acknowledge our sovereignty on the sea, and of thus attaining a mercantile supremacy throughout the world” (Dr. Cunningham’s “Growth of English Industry and Commerce,” p. 325).
[31]. (1) 1651. That the importation of goods into England, except in English ships, or in the ships of the nation producing the goods, was forbidden.
(2) 1663. That the colonies should receive no goods whatsoever by foreign vessels.
(3) 1672. That all the principal articles of commerce should be prohibited from being imported into England unless by English ships manned by a crew of whom at least three-quarters were English subjects.
[32]. England, Holland, and Sweden.
[33]. Prof. Seeley’s “Expansion of England,” p. 95.
[34]. “There was between England and France during the Seven Years’ War the most disastrous struggle in which France was ever engaged. For all the wars in Europe, from the Peace of Utrecht to the outbreak of the great Continental War, were waged on behalf of monopolies of commerce, or, to be more accurate, monopolies of market, for success meant the exclusion of the beaten nation from the markets now secured by the victorious rival. At the end of the Seven Years’ War France was stripped of nearly every colony she possessed. At the beginning of it she was the rival of England in North America and in India. At the end of it she had scarce a foothold in either” (J. E. Thorold Rogers, “The Economic Interpretation of History,” p. 110).