PURSUIT OF ALBION 233trade Lyons silks and Bordeaux wines and come out the better for the
trade.^1
That is the theory. The statesmen who guided the destinies of Eu
ropean nations did not have access to this logic; and if they had, they
would have paid it litde mind. They linked industrial advance to power.
The material and social advance of England could not fail to draw
the attention of commercial and political rivals: Spain, to begin with,
which came a cropper in its project to invade and dominate this sassy
island; then Holland, which saw the litde pretender pass it in trade and
drub it on the high seas; and finally and persistently, France, im
memorial enemy, bigger and more populous, pretender to European
hegemony and yet repeatedly loser to Britain's naval strength, financial
sinew, and commercial enterprise. Some French wrote of England in
admiration, by way of holding an example to their own government.
"England does not make the quarter of France," observed Pierre Le
Pesant, seigneur de Boisguillebert (1656-1714), French magistrate
and economist, toward the end of the seventeenth century, "neither in
number nor the fertility of its land.... Yet England has been able to
yield the Prince of Orange for the last three or four years revenues of
80 million livres [say 3 million pounds sterling], and do it without re
ducing the population to begging or forcing them to abandon their
land."^2
Others wrote in fear, seeing England not only as their country's
enemy but as a commercial power of unlimited potential. Thus the first
secretary (premier commis) of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, prepar
ing for the negotiations that led to the Treaty of Utrecht (1713),
warned his superiors against letting England obtain a foothold in the
Pacific. If, for example, one were to let them have a small island in the
Juan Fernandez group off the coast of Chile—a place whose sem
piternal solitude recommended it to Defoe as the locale of Robinson
Crusoe—
one can be sure that, however deserted it may be today ... if it came into
English hands, one would see there, in a few years, a large number of in
habitants, built-up ports, and the greatest entrepot in the world of Euro
pean and Asian manufactures, which the English would then purvey to the
kingdoms of Peru and Mexico.... Sixty millions in gold and silver com
ing from the mines of those countries would be the object and reward of
their industry. What efforts would this nation, so skillful in trade and rich
in vessels not be ready to make to get for itself this immense revenue from
America!... and what a loss for France to lose this market for its gildings