the ocean trade-routes, they would inevitably wither and die, or be absorbed into one of the rival and less liberal empires.[734] The allegiance of the colonists of various nations was in only slight measure determined by their own comparative strengths, and almost wholly by the naval powers of the home countries. Footnote 732: Mims, _Colbert's West Indian Policy_, p. 194. Footnote 733: _Cf._ Dutch prohibition of colonial manufactures, in Egerton, _Origin and Growth of British Dominions_, p. 118 _n._; Beer, _Old Colonial System_, vol. I, p. 150, for Portuguese policy. Footnote 734: For an example of the work England did in policing the trade routes, _cf._ the case of the King David. Sailing from Newfoundland to Tangier, she met with Algerine pirates off Cape St. Vincent, whom she fought off in a three-days running fight. Later, meeting with “Five Pirats more,” she was forced to surrender. A few days later, she was rescued by a ship of the English navy; but the two vessels meeting with “Six Pirats more,” the King David was a second time captured, to be rescued once again some days later by another English ship, and safely escorted into Malaga. _Acts Privy Council, Colonial, 1613-1680_, pp. xxxvi, 541. Such, in brief outline, was the European theory of empire held during our colonial period, some of the main features in the practical application of which can be traced back for several centuries before ever the question of empire arose, as we have indicated in our earlier chapters.[735] The old life of the Middle Ages, which had been largely municipal, had become national. The extraordinary energy of the new period, facing an entire globe to be appropriated and exploited, rapidly developed national spirit into imperial ambition, and the old ideas and practices of a small and legally restricted commerce had to be suddenly adapted and enlarged to meet a situation unprecedented in history. The surprising fact is not that, in so many ways, the theory and practice of empire-making should have contained errors and worked injustices, but that one which, after all, proved highly successful, should have been developed so immediately and so surely. Footnote 735: _Cf._ also Osgood, _American Colonies_, vol. III, pp. 195 _ff._