Читать книгу The Sea Road to the East, Gibraltar to Wei-hai-wei. Six Lectures Prepared for the Visual Instruction Committee of the Colonial Office онлайн

14 страница из 21

We think of Gibraltar to-day as one of the most valuable and necessary links in the chain of communication with the East; yet in the eighteenth century, some of the most patriotic and far-seeing among English statesmen were ready and even eager to restore it to Spain. Over and over again it was offered in exchange for some other place, or as a bribe for the Spanish alliance. In 1728, the Cabinet was prepared to surrender it without any return; Lord Townshend, writing to our ambassador, explains why they hesitated. “I am afraid that the bare mention of a proposal which carried the most distant appearance of laying England under an obligation of ever parting with that place would be sufficient to put the whole nation in a flame.” Even in 1783, after the great siege, we proposed to exchange Gibraltar for Porto Rico. The policy of our ministers was not so unreasonable as it seems at first sight. Our trade with the Near East was not increasing, and we had no special interests in the Mediterranean, so that it seemed a waste of strength to maintain a costly fortress there, when all that we could spare was needed for the defence of our distant dominions. In fact, France seemed to be the Power marked out by her history and geographical position as the natural ruler of the inland sea; and it was the sentiment of the English people rather than any practical justification in the conditions of the time which made us cling obstinately to our conquest.