But apart from other considerations, the maintenance of the power of Holland may be ascribed in great measure to the care with which she always preserved her navy, so necessary in those times, if not to create, at least to maintain her commercial and maritime prosperity. While Spain and Portugal, either from internal corruptions, the supineness of their rulers, or national decay, neglected their navies, Holland zealously maintained a predominating naval force at sea, and was thereby enabled, if not to perpetuate her naval greatness, at least to retard its decline and fall. To her own people and to every foreigner who sought an asylum in her territories, she granted the fullest religious and political freedom, and though it is difficult to trace any special free-trade enactments, as regards her navigation, to which her maritime success can be ascribed, abundant reasons for that success may be seen in her policy of non-intervention with the affairs of other nations, and in the facilities she afforded for the importation of every material suitable for ship-building purposes, and of the wool for her manufactures, which the English people preferred parting with to working it up at home. But, above all, the Dutch owed their success in maritime pursuits to many of the ancient laws of England, which, as we have seen in numerous instances, actually forbad any English exports in home bottoms, thus enabling the Dutch to grasp and keep to themselves large and valuable portions of the carrying trade, and thus laying the foundation of their wealth and greatness. When the English were at last awakened by the advice of Sir Walter Raleigh and other writers who followed him to a full consciousness of their own strength and of their previous legislative errors, they, with characteristic energy, resolved to adopt the most effective measures then in their power to remedy existing evils, although in attempting to remove the yoke which ancient custom, combined with their own inconsistent and absurd laws, had imposed, they by rushing into the opposite extreme laid the foundation for those stringent navigation laws which, curiously enough, a republic was the first to enforce. [Illustration] That they had maritime opponents of no ordinary kind to contend against, may be seen in the illustrations of some of the Dutch ships of the period which have been preserved. In the Print-room of the British Museum there will be found a drawing by Hollar of the stern of one of their largest and finest Indiamen, from which the above is a copy.