SEVENTEENTH CENTURY TO 1660 19 
English cloth across the Channel. Monopolists they 
were beyond question, and complaints of their mono- 
poly caused them for 2 moment to be supplanted by a 
rival company, which however was wholly unable to 
carry out its undertakings. It was in Bacon’s © Letter 
of Advice to the King upon the Breach with the New 
Company > that the above wotds occur. Whatever 
may have been the charges against them, it can hardly 
be doubted that the Merchant Adventurers had done 
the work of the nation; they had built up a great 
national export trade in a manner and to an extent 
which could not have been accomplished by © free 
ot loose’ trading. Still less would ‘free or loose’ 
trading have met the case when it became a matter of 
traffic not across the narrow sea, but across the ocean. 
All the coming history of the oversea dealings of 
England was to prove the truth of Bacon’s words 
that © trading in companies is most agreeable to the 
English nature.’ 
No one was more alive than Bacon to © the vantage 
of strength at sea (which is one of the principal dowries 
of this Kingdom of Great Britain).” © The wealth of 
both Indies,” he continues in this same essay, © Of the 
True Greatness of Kingdoms and Estates,” ‘ seems in 
great part but an accessory to the command of the 
seas.’ 1 Similarly in ¢ Considerations touching a War 
with Spain,” he writes of the Spaniards, ¢ Their great- 
ness consisteth in their treasure, their treasure in 
their Indies ; and their Indies (if it be well weighed) ate 
indeed but an accession to such as are masters by sea.’ 2 
1 The Works of Francis Bacon (1870), by James Spedding, vol. vi, 
2 2 Life of Francis Bacon (1874), ut sup., vol. vii, pp. 499-500.