associates was lost, and an occasion, opportune through the exhaustion
of the great enemy, Spain, passed unimproved. But, though thus
temporarily checked, the national tendency remained, and quickly
resumed its sway when Cromwell's mighty hand had composed the
disorders of the Commonwealth. His clear-sighted statesmanship, as
well as the immediate necessities of his internal policy, dictated the
strenuous assertion by sea of Great Britain's claims, not only to
external respect, which he rigorously exacted, but also to her due
share in influencing the world outside her borders. The nation quickly
responded to his proud appeal, and received anew the impulse upon the
road to sea power which never since has been relaxed. To him were due
the measures--not, perhaps, economically the wisest, judged by modern
lights, but more than justified by the conditions of his times--which
drew into English hands the carrying trade of the world. The glories
of the British navy as an organized force date also from his short
rule; and it was he who, in 1655, laid a firm basis for the
development of the country's sea power in the Caribbean, by the
conquest of Jamaica, from a military standpoint the most decisive of
all single positions in that sea for the control of the Isthmus. It is
true that the successful attempt upon this island resulted from the
failure of the leaders to accomplish Cromwell's more immediate purpose
of reducing Santo Domingo,--that in so far the particular fortunate
issue was of the nature of an accident; but this fact serves only to
illustrate more emphatically that, when a general line of policy,
whether military or political, is correctly chosen upon sound
principles, incidental misfortunes or disappointments do not frustrate
the conception. The sagacious, far-seeing motive, which prompted
Cromwell's movement against the West Indian possessions of Spain, was
to contest the latter's claim to the monopoly of that wealthy region;
and he looked upon British extension in the islands as simply a
stepping-stone to control upon the adjacent continent. It is a
singular commentary upon the blindness of historians to the true
secret of Great Britain's rise among the nations, and of the eminent
position she so long has held, that writers so far removed from each
other in time and characteristics as Hume and the late J.R. Green
should detect in this far-reaching effort of the Protector, only the
dulled vision of "a conservative an