The Colonization of the Middle States and Maryland (Volume 4) (Paperback)

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 I EARLY DUTCH SETTLEMENTS ON THE HUDSON, 1613-1647 "THOSE Dutch are strong people. They raised their land out of a marsh, and went on for a long period of time breeding cows and making cheese, and might have gone on with their cows and cheese till doomsday. But Spain comes over and says: ' We want you to believe in St. Ignatius.' 'Very sorry,' replied the Dutch,'but we can't.' 'God! but you must,' says Spain; and they went about with guns and swords to make the Dutch believe in St. Ignatius. Never made them believe in him, but did succeed in breaking their own vertebral column forever, and raising the Dutch into a great nation." Thus does Carlyle devote a number of teeth of his Teutonic saw to the Spanish, whose persecution of the Dutch made possible the extension of the latter's commercial power to America. Emerging strong from the fight for religious liberty; compelled by the physical condition of their soil to become a maritime nation?the Dutch studied the weak and strong points of Spain, and studying, saw, and seeing, soon overcame her. "Brave Little Holland" fell heir to Spain's commercial supremacy and turned it to a far better account than that decaying nation had done. Not until the passage of Oliver Cromwell's Acts of Trade in the middle of the seventeenth century was Holland's commercial supremacy threatened.She was the carrier of the larger part of the world's commerce; consequently she was the first to see the anomalies of the commercial principles of mercantilism. While England and other countries were making ineffectual laws prohibitory of the exportation of the precious metals, Holland was removing all restrictions to their natural flow. It was perfectly evident to her that commerce was not a gambling scheme by which one country lost and the oth...