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These were, at first, like other nations who invaded America, inclined to consider the neighbourhood of the natives, as troublesome and dangerous, and are charged with having destroyed great numbers; but they are now grown wiser, if not honester, and, instead of endeavouring to frighten the Indians away, they invite them to inter-marriage and cohabitation, and allure them, by all practicable methods, to become the subjects of the king of France.

If the Spaniards, when they first took possession of the newly discovered world, instead of destroying the inhabitants by thousands, had either had the urbanity or the policy to have conciliated them by kind treatment, and to have united them, gradually, to their own people, such an accession might have been made to the power of the king of Spain, as would have made him far the greatest monarch that ever yet ruled in the globe; but the opportunity was lost by foolishness and cruelty, and now can never be recovered.

When the parliament had finally prevailed over our king, and the army over the parliament, the interests of the two commonwealths of England and Holland soon appeared to be opposite, and a new government declared war against the Dutch. In this contest was exerted the utmost power of the two nations, and the Dutch were finally defeated, yet not with such evidence of superiority, as left us much reason to boast our victory: they were obliged, however, to solicit peace, which was granted them on easy conditions; and Cromwell, who was now possessed of the supreme power, was left at leisure to pursue other designs.

The European powers had not yet ceased to look with envy on the Spanish acquisitions in America, and, therefore, Cromwell thought, that if he gained any part of these celebrated regions, he should exalt his own reputation, and enrich the country. He, therefore, quarrelled with the Spaniards upon some such subject of contention, as he that is resolved upon hostility may always find; and sent Penn and Venables into the western seas. They first landed in Hispaniola, whence they were driven off, with no great reputation to themselves; and that they might not return without having done something, they afterwards invaded Jamaica, where they found less resistance, and obtained that island, which was afterwards consigned to us, being probably of little value to the Spaniards, and continues, to this day, a place of great wealth and dreadful wickedness, a den of tyrants and a dungeon of slaves.

Cromwell, who, perhaps, had not leisure to study foreign politicks, was very fatally mistaken with regard to Spain and France. Spain had been the last power in Europe which had openly pretended to give law to other nations, and the memory of this terrour remained, when the real cause was at an end. We had more lately been frighted by Spain than by France; and though very few were then alive of the generation that had their sleep broken by the armada, yet the name of the Spaniards was still terrible and a war against them was pleasing to the people.

Our own troubles had left us very little desire to look out upon the continent; an inveterate prejudice hindered us from perceiving, that, for more than half a century, the power of France had been increasing, and that of Spain had been growing less; nor does it seem to have been remembered, which yet required no great depth of policy to discern, that of two monarchs, neither of which could be long our friend, it was our interest to have the weaker near us; or, that if a war should happen, Spain, however wealthy or strong in herself, was, by the dispersion of her territories, more obnoxious to the attacks of a naval power, and, consequently, had more to fear from us, and had it less in her power to hurt us.

All these considerations were overlooked by the wisdom of that age; and Cromwell assisted the French to drive the Spaniards out of Flanders, at a time when it was our interest to have supported the Spaniards against France, as formerly the Hollanders against Spain, by which we might, at least, have retarded the growth of the French power, though, I think, it must have finally prevailed.