he
general commercial ideas of that day, perhaps no further harm would
have resulted; but the condition of things and the temper of her
government would not let her stop there. It was not possible to guard
and effectually seal a sea-coast extending over hundreds of miles,
with innumerable inlets; nor would traders and seamen, in pursuit of
gain which they had come to consider their right, be deterred by fears
of penalties nor consideration for Spanish susceptibilities. The power
of Spain was not great enough to enforce on the English ministry any
regulation of their shipping, or stoppage of the abuse of the treaty
privileges, in face of the feelings of the merchants; and so the
weaker State, wronged and harassed, was goaded into the use of wholly
unlawful means. Ships-of-war and guarda-costas were instructed, or at
least permitted, to stop and search English ships on the high seas,
outside of Spanish jurisdiction; and the arrogant Spanish temper,
unrestrained by the weak central government, made many of these
visits, both the lawful and the unlawful, scenes of insult and even
violence. Somewhat similar results, springing from causes not entirely
different, have occurred in the relations of Spanish officials to the
United States and American merchant-ships in our own day. The stories
of these acts of violence coming back to England, coupled with cases
of loss by confiscation and by the embarrassment of trade, of course
stirred up the people. In 1737 the West India merchants petitioned the
House of Commons, saying,--

"For many years past their ships have not only frequently been
stopped and searched, but also forcibly and arbitrarily seized
upon the high seas, by Spanish ships fitted out to cruise, under
the plausible pretext of guarding their own coasts; that the
commanders thereof, with their crews, have been inhumanly
treated, and their ships carried into some of the Spanish ports
and there condemned with their cargoes, in manifest violation of
the treaties subsisting between the two crowns; that the
remonstrances of his Majesty's ministers at Madrid receive no
attention, and that insults and plunder must soon destroy their
trade."

Walpole struggled hard, during the ten years following 1729, to keep
off war. In that year a treaty signed at Seville professed to regulate
matters, restoring the conditions of trade to what they had been four
years before, and providing that