on in 1616, and to try him for them. It had
failed. Much of the testimony it had painfully collected was dubious,
vague, biassed, interested, or plainly corrupt. Such as it was the
Council either would not, or could not, rely upon it for a conviction.
Ralegh's transactions with the Frenchmen were unwarrantable, if its view
of them were correct. But they had resulted in nothing, and they were a
continuation of relations which it had itself promoted. At San Thome, if
he were liable for his men, as partially he did not deny, though he
might have denied it, he had broken the King's peace by an invasion of
Spanish territory, if Guiana were Spanish. He maintained that it was as
much English as it was Spanish, if not more; and they neither dared, in
the existing state of national opinion, nor perhaps cared, to gainsay
the doctrine. His alleged schemes for the maritime spoliation of
Spaniards may well have been to his mind lawful. All English seamen, and
the nation at large, believed that the articles of peace between the two
kingdoms did not extend beyond the Equator. In the latest treaty with
Spain, that of 1604, the Indies and their trade were intentionally not
mentioned, on account of the insoluble difficulties arising out of the
Spanish determination to shut the region to free European trade. For
Ralegh and a multitude of Englishmen, and Spaniards also, England and
Spain were in America always at war. Neither national nor international
law countenanced the doctrine. Any Englishman who had devastated
Spanish commerce in the West Indies, would, during a large part of
Elizabeth's reign, have been amenable to criminal justice, if the State
had prosecuted. But the State then was not inclined to prosecute for
such acts. During the next reign some statesmen continued to hold, like
the people, that there was no peace beyond the Line. If there were
peace, the State could not have proceeded against Ralegh for the thought
of breaking it. The single criminal act proved was his attempt at
escape. For it he might have been tried and punished. But the most
triumphant prosecution on such a charge would not have given the
Government the pound of flesh it owed to Spain. Nothing less was of use.

[Sidenote: _Ralegh's real Motive._]

[Sidenote: _The Rest Talk._]

The administration floundered about in futile efforts. Perpetually it
was deluded by a sensation of solid ground which immediately slipped
from under its feet. It was the more enra