44 RELIGION, COLONISING AND TRADE
Adam Smith they were the people of Europe who
most neatly approached to free trade. Mun saw what
strength and riches the policy of unrestricted or lightly
taxed imports had brought to the Netherlands; he
saw again how the port of Leghorn had risen in consequence
 of the liberal commercial policy of the then
Grand Duke of Tuscany ; and he applied the lesson to
England, while insisting on the great gain to be derived
from trade with distant countries (on which point
Adam Smith differed from him), ‘besides the increase
of shipping and mariners thereby.” !
In the first years after the Restoration, when
Mun’s treatise was published, Clarendon was the
principal adviser.of Charles II. He was a member
of the General Council of Foreign Plantations constituted
 before the end of 1660, and he claimed to be,
and no doubt was, a good friend of the Overseas
Empire. He said of himself that ‘at His Majesty’s return
 and before, he had used all the endeavours he could
to prepare and dispose the King to a great esteem
of his plantations, and to encourage the improvement
 of them in all the ways which could reasonably
be proposed tohim.”2 Doyle’s estimate of his policy
towards New England was that it was not a policy
conspicuous for liberality or farsighted wisdom. Butit
was in the main just and intelligent.” ® We have seen
that in 1661-2 Clarendon gave his name in support
of The Company for Propagation of the Gospel in
New England, and he was one of the eight patentees
i
2 LAr Clarendon (Oxford, 1827, 3 vols.), vol. iii, p. 407.
8 The English in America, ut sup.: The Puritan Colonies, vol. ii,
D. 150. ¢ Supra, p. 29.