Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II. The Pioneer Period : Portugal, Spain, England. The Motives. In the formation of our Empire we shall see in action motive powers of various kinds controlled towards one end. For the early stages it is not necessary to make much analysis. We may very well allow that with nations as with men, and with animal life generally, there is such a thing as spontaneous activity, especially when the nation is young and vigorous. The English nation had energy to spare, and was soon aware that new opportunities were offered, especially to those of her people who were already occupied with commerce and were familiar with the sea. In her ports and all along the sea-board of the southern counties the movement was soon intensely felt. Gentlemen and merchants banded themselves together for ' ventures' and found no lack of mariners to man their little ships. There can be no doubt that in many minds the aim was for Gold: but somehow the gold-yearning of an early period hardly carries with it the sordid associations of later times. When a man takes his life in his hand, and sallies forth with all his wits on the qui vive, and all his courage required, even the pursuit of gold has some nobility about it; and when his life is risked not only in stormy wind and tempest, but also in conflicts with savages in unknown lands, and in still greater jeopardies from jealous and angry rivals, we feel that we must allow him some claim upon our capacity for admiration. In England, too, we find that gold had far less share inthe attraction than it had in Spain. We can best describe our aim as Trade: the acquisition of bounties of Nature not bestowed on our own land, in exchange for products of our own industrious people. In looking at the great expansion of trade in the new era we must note tha... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.