59 
are to consider, we are a very little spot in the map of 
the world and make a great figure only by trade, which 
is the creature of liberty. . . . The Navyisof so great 
importance that it would be disparaged by calling it 
less than the life and soul of Government.’ Over 
forty years later, Bolingbroke, in ‘The Idea of a 
Patriot King,” written in 1738 and published in 1749, 
wrote of trade and sea power in much the same terms 
as Halifax. ‘The situation of Great Britain, the 
character of her people, and the nature of her Govern- 
ment, fit her for trade and commerce. Her climate 
and her soil make them necessary to her well-being. 
By trade and commerce we grew a rich and powerful 
nation, and by their decay we are growing poor and 
impotent. As trade and commerce enrich, so they 
fortify our country. The sea is our barrier, ships are 
our fortresses, and the mariners that trade and com- 
merce alone can furnish are the garrisons to defend 
them.’ 2 
1688-1783 
Before the seventeenth century went out, in 1696, 
the year after Halifax died, a Board of Trade and 
Plantations was created by King William III, which 
lasted until it was swept away by an Act of 1782, 
passed at the instance of Edmund Burke, in view 
of the coming independence of the North American 
colonies. The title of the Board told the facts of the 
case. Until the Old Empire came to an end, for fully 
three-quarters of the eighteenth century, trade con- 
Y The Complete Works of George Savile, First Marquess of Halifax, 
edited, with an Introduction, by W. Raleigh (1912), pp. 169, 172, 175. 
2 [etters on the Spirit of Patriotism and on the Idea of a Patriot King 
(Clarendon Press, 1917), with an Introduction by A. Hassall, Student 
of Christchurch, p. 116.