nd by arresting and imprisoning the officers and
sailors of English merchantmen. The Spaniards asserted, and were able
in many instances to make their assertions good, that whole squadrons
of English trading vessels sometimes entered the Spanish ports under
pretence of being driven there by stress of weather, or by the need of
refitting and refreshing; and that, once in the port, they managed to
get their cargoes safely ashore. Sometimes, too, it was said, the
vessels lay off the shore without going into the harbor; and then
smugglers came off in their long, low, swift boats, and received the
English goods and carried them into the port. The fact undoubtedly was
that the English merchants were driving a roaring trade with the
Spanish colonies; just as the Spanish authorities might very well have
known that they would be certain to do. Where one set of men are
anxious to sell, and another set are just as anxious to buy, it needs
very rigorous coastguard watching to prevent the goods being sent in
and the money taken away.

This fact, however, does not say anything against the {152} right of
Spain to enforce, if she could, the conditions of the treaties. On
that point Spain was only asserting her indisputable right. But would
it be reasonable to expect that Spain or any other country could
endeavor to maintain her right in such a dispute, and under such
conditions, without occasional rashness, violence, and injustice on the
part of her officials? There can be no doubt that many high-handed and
arbitrary acts were done against English subjects by the officers of
Spanish authority. On every real and every reported and every
imaginary act of Spanish harshness the Patriots seized with avidity.
They presented petitions, moved for papers, moved that this injured
person and that be allowed to appear and state his case at the bar of
the House of Commons. Some English sailors and other Englishmen were
thus allowed to appear at the bar, and did make statements of outrage
and imprisonment. Some of these statements were doubtless true, some
were probably exaggerated; the men who made them were not on oath;
there was every temptation to exaggerate, because it had become
apparently the duty of every true Patriot who loved old England to
believe anything said by anybody against Spain. The same sort of thing
has happened again and again in times nearer to our own, where some
class of English traders have been trying to carry o