s year made an effort to persuade the Muscovy Company to divert
its energies toward America. Why remain under the power of the King of
Denmark, he asked, or other princes who "command our shippes at their
pleasure," when all the products of the Baltic regions were to be had
from unoccupied territories which so easily could be placed under the
English flag?

It has often been taken for granted that the statesmen and merchants of
three centuries ago pursued always a mistaken and shortsighted economic
policy. John Fiske assures us that even at the close of the Eighteenth
century the barbarous superstitions of the Middle Ages concerning trade
between nations still flourished with scarcely diminished vitality. Yet
it requires but a cursory study of the theories and arguments of the
Elizabethan economists to realize that they were men of ability and
vision, that they knew what was needed and how to procure it, that they
were nearer right than many have supposed. In fact, they acted upon
sound economic principles a century and a half before Adam Smith
formulated and expounded them.

These men realized keenly that England's safety demanded a larger
measure of economic independence and they pointed out what seemed to be
the only available means of securing it. Since her forests upon which
her prosperity in the past had been so largely based, were nearing the
point of exhaustion, she must expand to embrace new lands where the
virgin growth of trees stood untouched. If this is barbarous, then the
recent efforts of Italy to gain an independent coal supply, of Great
Britain to get control of various oil fields, of the United States to
build up a dye industry, are all likewise barbarous. In fact the world
today in matters of economic policy has by no means gotten away from the
conceptions of the men whose able writings cleared the way for the
beginning of the British colonial empire.

But it must not be supposed that England in this matter was concerned
only for her supply of naval stores, potash and pig iron. There were
other products, not so vital it is true, but still important, which she
was forced to seek abroad. From the south of Europe came salt, sugar,
wine, silk, fruits; from the Far East saltpetre and dyes, together with
spices for making palatable the winter's stock of food; from Holland
came fish, from France wine and silk. And as in the Baltic, so elsewhere
the merchants of London and Bristol and Plymouth found their a