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.