ng profits which arose from the creation of the English
colonies: it was said that ten Dutch ships called at Barbados for every
English ship. To deal with this they passed the Navigation Act of 1651,
which provided that the trade of England and the colonies should be
carried only in English or colonial ships. They thus gave a logical
expression to the policy of imperial trade monopoly which had been in
the minds of those who were interested in colonial questions from the
outset; and they also opened a period of acute trade rivalry and war
with the Dutch. The first of the Dutch wars, which was waged by the
Commonwealth, was a very even struggle, but it secured the success of
the Navigation Act. Cromwell, though he hastened to make peace with the
Dutch, was a still stronger imperialist than his parliamentary
predecessors; he may justly be described as the first of the Jingoes.
He demanded compensation from the Dutch for the half-forgotten outrage
of Amboyna in 1623. He made a quite unprovoked attack upon the Spanish
island of Hispaniola, and though he failed to conquer it, gained a
compensation in the seizure of Jamaica (1655). And he insisted upon the
obedience of the colonies to the home government with a severity never
earlier shown. With him imperial aims may be said to have become, for
the first time, one of the ruling ends of the English government.

But it was the reign of Charles II. which saw the definite organisation
of a clearly conceived imperial policy; in the history of English
imperialism there are few periods more important. The chief statesmen
and courtiers of the reign, Prince Rupert, Clarendon, Shaftesbury,
Albemarle, were all enthusiasts for the imperial idea. They had a
special committee of the Privy Council for Trade and Plantations,[4]
and appointed John Locke, the ablest political thinker of the age, to
be its secretary. They pushed home the struggle against the maritime
ascendancy of the Dutch, and fought two Dutch wars; and though the
history-books, influenced by the Whig prejudice against Charles II.,
always treat these wars as humiliating and disgraceful, while they
treat the Dutch war of the Commonwealth as just and glorious, the plain
fact is that the first Dutch war of Charles II. led to the conquest of
the Dutch North American colony of the New Netherlands (1667), and so
bridged the gap between the New England and the southern colonies. They
engaged in systematic colonisation, founding the n