The whole excitement arose out of certain long-standing trade disputes between England and Spain in the New World. These disputes had been referred to in the Treaty of Utrecht, which was supposed to have settled them in 1713; and again in the Treaty of Seville, which was believed to have finally settled them in 1729. England had recognized the right of Spain to regulate the trade with Spanish colonies. Spain agreed that England should have the privilege of supplying the Spanish colonies with slaves. This noble privilege English traders exercised to the full. It is not very gratifying to have to recollect that two of England's great disputes with Spain were about England's claim to an unlimited right to sell slaves to the Spanish colonies. To England, or at least to the English South Sea Company, was also conceded the permission to send one merchant vessel each year to the South Seas with as much English goods to sell to the Spanish colonies as a {151} ship of 500 tons could carry. As everybody might have expected, the provisions of the treaty were constantly broken through. The English traders were very eager to sell their goods; the Spanish colonists were very glad to get them to buy. All other commerce than that in slaves and the one annual shipload of English goods was strictly prohibited by Spain. The whole arrangement now seems in the highest degree artificial and absurd; but it was not an uncommon sort of international arrangement then. As was to be expected, the English traders set going a huge illicit trade in the South Seas. This was done partly by the old familiar smuggling process, and partly, too, by keeping little fleets of smaller vessels swarming off the coasts and reloading the one legitimate vessel as often as her contents were sent into a port. This ingenious device was said to have been detected by the Spanish authorities in various places. The Spaniards retaliated by stopping and searching English vessels cruising anywhere near the coast of a Spanish colony, and by arresting and imprisoning the officers and sailors of English merchantmen. The Spaniards asserted, and were able in many instances to make their assertions good, that whole squadrons of English trading vessels sometimes entered the Spanish ports under pretence of being driven there by stress of weather, or by the need of refitting and refreshing; and that, once in the port, they managed to get their cargoes safely ashore. Sometimes, too, it was said, the vessels lay off the shore without going into the harbor; and then smugglers came off in their long, low, swift boats, and received the English goods and carried them into the port. The fact undoubtedly was that the English merchants were driving a roaring trade with the Spanish colonies; just as the Spanish authorities might very well have known that they would be certain to do. Where one set of men are anxious to sell, and another set are just as anxious to buy, it needs