,360,000; French wine 2,000,000; French dyes 600,000; French
salt 360,000; Spanish wool 1,250,000; Spanish wine 1,600,000;
Portuguese spices 2,000,000; English wool 500,000; English cloth
10,000,000. The last named article indicates the decay of Flemish
weaving due to English competition. For a time there had been war to
the knife with English merchants, following the great commercial treaty
popularly called the _Malus Intercursus_. [Sidenote: 1506] According
to the theory then held that one nation's loss was another's gain,
[Sidenote: Commercial policy] this treaty was considered a masterpiece
of policy in England and the foundation of her commercial greatness.
It and its predecessor, the _Magnus Intercursus_, [Sidenote: 1496]
marked the new policy, characteristic of modern times, that made
commercial advantages a chief object of diplomacy and of legislation.
Protective tariffs were enacted, the export of gold and silver
prohibited, and sumptuary laws passed to encourage domestic industries.
The policy as to export varied throughout the century and according to
the article. The value of ships was highly appreciated. Sir Walter
Raleigh opined that command of the sea meant command of the world's
riches and ultimately of the world itself. Sir Humphrey Gilbert drew
up a report advocating the acquisition of colonies as means of
providing markets for home products. So little were the rights of the
natives {533} considered that Sir Humphrey stated that the savages
would be amply rewarded for all that could be taken from them by the
inestimable gift of Christianity.

[Sidenote: Buccaneering]

As little regard was shown for the property of Catholics as for that of
heathens. Merry England drew her dividends from slave-trading and from
buccaneering as well as from honest exchange of goods. There is
something fascinating about the career of a man like Sir John Hawking
whose character was as infamous as his daring was serviceable. He
early learned that "negroes were very good merchandise in Hispaniola
and that they might easily be had upon the coast of Guinea," and so,
financed by the British aristocracy and blessed by Protestant patriots,
he chartered the _Jesus of Luebeck_ and went burning, stealing and
body-snatching in West African villages, crowded his hold full of
blacks and sold those of them who survived at $800 a head in the
Indies. Quite fittingly he received as a crest "a demi-Moor, proper,
in chains." He