This “Discourse” boldly set forth the bearings of Raleigh’s enterprise upon the power of Spain (with which war was ultimately proclaimed). If pursued at once it would be “a great bridle of the Indies of the King of Spain,” and stay him from “flowing over all the face” of the firm land of America. Raleigh’s plan contemplated a flank movement upon Spain in the seas of the West Indies and the Spanish Main, while England was preparing for intervention in the Netherlands. From her American possessions, in the wealth which her treasure-ships brought thence, Spain was deriving the sinews of her strength. With this wealth she was enabled to support her armies in Europe, build and equip fleets, keep alive dissensions, bribe, in her interests, “great men and whole states.” Her power in her American possessions Raleigh would break. English colonies planted on the North American continent would be in position to attack her at a vulnerable point and arrest her treasure-ships. A surprising weakness of her defences in Spanish America, through the withdrawal of her soldiers to maintain her armies in the Netherlands, had been discovered by Sir John Hawkins and Sir Francis Drake in recent voyages. In this unprotected condition of the region was found a powerful inducement to English colonization as now proposed. The necessity of “speedy planting in divers fit places” upon these “lucky western discoveries” was also urged to prevent their being occupied by other nations which now had “the like intentions.” The queen of England’s title to America, “at least to so much as is from Florida to the circle artic,” by virtue of the Cabot discoveries, was reasserted as “more lawful and right than the Spaniard’s or any other prince’s.” The various “testimonies” to this claim were again enumerated. Stress also was again laid upon the “probability of the easy and quick finding of the Northwest Passage.” The value to England, through her opening of the West, in the yield to her of “all the commodities of Europe, Africa, and Asia,” as far as her adventurers might travel, and in the supply of the wants of England’s decayed trades, was dwelt upon. It was shown that, with the possession of this region planted by Englishmen, England would obtain every material for creating great navies—goodly timber for building ships, trees for masts, pitch, tar, and hemp—all for “no price.” Thus it was apparent “how easy a matter it may be to this realm swarming at this day with valiant youths rusting and hurtful for lack of employment, and having good makers of cable and all sorts of cordage, and the best and most cunning shipwrights of the world, to be lords of all those seas, and to spoil Philip’s Indian navy, and to deprive him of yearly passage of his treasure into Europe.” As for the religious argument, the zealous Protestant advocate reasoned that by planting in America from England the “glory of the gospel” would be enlarged,