igh the Spaniards would fetch him away and
hang him in Madrid. In these conditions, and clutching at life as a man
clutches at roots and branches when he is sliding down a precipice, the
conduct of Raleigh has given cause to his critics to blaspheme. He
wriggled like an eel, he pretended to be sick, he pretended to be mad,
in order to protract his examination. He prevaricated about his mine,
about the French alliance, about the Spanish treaties, about his stores
and instruments. Did he believe, or did he not believe, in the Empire of
the Inca, in the Amazons or Republic of Women, in the gold lying hidden
in the hard white spar of El Dorado? We do not know, and his own latest
efforts at explanation only cloud our counsel. He was perhaps really a
little mad at last, his feverish brain half-crazed by the movement on
land and sea of the triumphant wealth of Spain.

Let us never overlook that the master-passion of his whole career was
hatred of this tyrannous prosperity of England's most formidable rival.
He acted impulsively, and even unjustly; there was much in his methods
that a cool judgment must condemn; but he was fighting, with his back to
the wall, in order that the British race should not be crowded out of
existence by "the proud Iberian." He saw that if Spain were permitted to
extend her military and commercial supremacy unchecked, there would be
an end to civilisation. Democracy was a thing as yet undeveloped, but
the seeds of it were lying in the warm soil of English liberty, and
Raleigh perceived, more vehemently than any other living man, that the
complete victory of Spain would involve the shipwreck of England's hopes
of future prosperity. Nor was he exclusively interested in England,
though all his best hopes were ours. When he had been a lad at Oxford he
had broken away from his studies in 1569 to help the Protestant princes
as a gentleman volunteer in France, and he took part in the famous
battle of Jarnac. He is supposed to have fought in France for six years.
From early youth his mind was "bent on military glory," and always in
opposition to Spain. His escape from the bloody Vespers of Saint
Bartholomew had given him a deep distrust of the policy of Rome. The
Spaniard had "abused and tormented" the wretched inhabitants of
Flanders. Sir Walter Raleigh dreamed that by the combination in arms of
England, France, and the Low Countries, the Spaniards "might not only be
persuaded to live in peace, but all their