Drake, Nelson and Napoleon | Page 6

poor sailor prisoners. The apparently modest request was granted. Hawkins had risked his life to accomplish this, and now he writes a letter to Cecil beginning "My very good Lord." I do not give the whole of the letter. Suffice it to say that he confirms the success of the plot so far as he is concerned, and in a last paragraph he says, "I have sent your Lordship the copy of my pardon from the King of Spain, in the order and manner I have it, with my great titles and honours from the King, from which God deliver me."
The process by which Hawkins succeeded in obtaining the object he had in view was the conception of no ordinary man. We talk and write of his wonderful accomplishments on sea and land, as a skilful, brave sailor, but he was more than that. He was, in many respects, a genius, and his courage and resolution were unfailingly magnificent.
I dare say the prank he played on Philip and his advisers would be regarded as unworthy cunning, and an outrage on the rules of high honour. Good Protestant Christians disapproved then, as now, the wickedness of thus gambling with religion to attain any object whatsoever, and especially of swearing by the Mother of God the renunciation of the Protestant faith and the adoption of Roman Catholicism. The Spaniards, who had a hand in this nefarious proceeding, were quite convinced that, though Hawkins had been a pirate and a sea robber and murderer, now that he had come over to their faith the predisposition to his former evil habits would leave him. These were the high moral grounds on which was based the resolve to execute Elizabeth and a large number of her subjects, and take possession of the throne and private property at their will. It was, of course, the spirit of retaliation for the iniquities of the British rovers which was condoned by their monarch. In justification of our part of the game during this period of warfare for religious and material ascendancy, we stand by the eternal platitude that in that age we were compelled to act differently from what we should be justified in doing now. Civilization, for instance, so the argument goes, was at a low ebb then. I am not so sure that it did not stand higher than it does now. It is so easy for nations to become uncivilized, and we, in common with other nations, have a singular aptitude for it when we think we have a grievance. Be that as it may, Hawkins, Drake, and the other fine sea rovers had no petty scruples about relieving Spaniards of their treasure when they came across it on land or on their ships at sea. Call them by what epithet you like, they believed in the sanctity of their methods of carrying on war, and the results for the most part confirmed the accuracy of their judgment. At any rate, by their bold and resolute deeds they established British freedom and her supremacy of the seas, and handed down to us an abiding spirit that has reared the finest seamen and established our incomparable merchant fleet, the largest and finest in the world.
There is no shame in wishing the nation to become imbued with the spirit of these old-time heroes, for the heritage they have bequeathed to us is divine and lives on. We speak of the great deeds they were guided to perform, but we rarely stop to think from whence the inspiration came, until we are touched by a throbbing impulse that brings us into the presence of the great mystery, at which who would dare to mock?
It is strange that Hawkins' and Drake's brilliant and tragic careers should have been brought to an end by the same disease within a short time of each other and not many miles apart, and that their mother, the sea, should have claimed them at last in the vicinity of the scene of their first victorious encounter with their lifelong enemies, the Spaniards. The death of the two invincibles, who had long struck terror into the hearts of their foes, was the signal for prolonged rejoicings in the Spanish Main and the Indies, while the British squadron, battered and disease-smitten, made its melancholy way homeward with the news of the tragedy.
For a time the loss of these commanding figures dealt a blow at the national spirit. There are usually long intervals between C?sars and Napoleons. Nations have, in obedience to some law of Nature, to pass through periods of mediocre rule, and when men of great genius and dominating qualities come to clear up the mess, they are only tolerated possibly by fear, and never for long by appreciation. A capricious public soon tires of