Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 150.djvu/432

Princes and potentates in all ages have been generous in giving away what never belonged to them. The fashion prevails still, for we have just seen the subdivision of the Dark Continent and its inhabitants into various “spheres of influence” assigned to European Powers. But perhaps the most audacious examples on record of the transfer of non-existent rights of property were, when the Pope, by a solemn bull, conferred the southern half of the western hemisphere respectively on the Spaniards and Portuguese; and when James I. of England granted what is now by far the greater part of the vast United States territory to a handful of impecunious English adventurers. It is curious to speculate on what would have happened had the Spaniards, advancing northwards from Mexico and Florida, anticipated the English occupation. The northern continent would have been garrisoned rather than colonised; the Holy Office would have established its quarters on the Potomac, in the Bay of Massachusetts, and on the Hudson; there would have been neither civil nor religious liberty, and little commerce; there would have been no place of refuge for the persecuted English; no revolt of the colonies; no grand Republic, offering unlimited opportunity to the adventurous or the poverty-stricken of many nations. Life might still be stagnating in the best part of the New World, and rare travellers might be exploring the unpeopled solitudes, now covered with crops and cattle, traversed by railways in all directions, and thickly studded with flourishing cities.

As it was, however, it is to the Spaniards we are indirectly indebted for our earliest settlement in Virginia. The treasure-galleons, laden with Mexican gold and Peruvian silver, had tempted the cupidity of freebooting seamen like Drake, and awakened the cupidity and the nobler ambitions of more chivalrous adventurers like Raleigh and Grenville. Raleigh dreamed of discovering an El Dorado richer than the mines of Potosi or Mexico, to the north of the Spanish line. Though his fervid imagination revelled in extravagant day-dreams, he had an eminently practical side to his character. No promoter or prospectus-monger of modern days could have put fanciful speculations in more seductive shape. He had the idea of forming a syndicate: he raised a capital of no less than £40,000,—a very large sum for the times to be devoted to any such purpose,—and he sank it in the Virginian venture. Raleigh and the members of his syndicate, although they ran a heavier pecuniary risk, resembled the present holders of founders’ shares, inasmuch as they stipulated for the lion’s part of the profits. It says much for English hardihood that they found no difficulty in manning the ships, as it explains the defeat of the Invincible Armada. The Atlantic voyage was very naturally considered so serious a business, that seamen accustomed to coasting navigation, leading the loosest of lives, and who were more given to tavern-haunting and profane swearing than to hymn-singing, prepared for it by solemn acts of devotion. In fact, no insurance company, had life assurance been in fashion