Revelations of the Diplomatic History of the 18th Century

“Trade is become the very life of our State; and what food is to life naval stores are to a fleet. The whole trade we drive with all the other nations of the earth, at best, is but lucrative; this, of the north, is indispensably needful, and may not be improperly termed the sacra embole of Great Britain, as being its chiefest foreign vent, for the support of all our trade, and our safety at home. As woollen manufactures and minerals are the staple commodities of Great Britain, so are likewise naval stores those of Muscovy, as also of all those very provinces in the Baltic, which the Czar has so lately wrested from the crown of Sweden. Since those provinces have been in the Czar’s possession, Pernau is entirely waste. At Revel we have not one British merchant left, and all the trade which was formerly at Narva, is now brought to Petersburg.... The Swede could never possibly engross the trade of our subjects, because those seaports in his hands were but so many thoroughfares from whence these commodities were uttered, the places of their produce or manufacture lying behind those ports, in the dominions of the Czar. But, if left to the Czar, these Baltic ports are no more thoroughfares, but peculiar magazines from the inland countries of the Czar’s own dominions. Having already Archangel in the White Sea, to leave him but any seaport in the Baltic were to put no less in his hands than the two keys of the general magazines of all the naval stores of Europe: it being known, that Danes, Swedes, Poles and Prussians have but single and distinct branches of those commodities in their several dominions If the Czar should thus engross “the supply of what we cannot do without, where then is our fleet? Or, indeed, where is the security for all our trade to any part of the earth besides?”

If then, the interest of British commerce requires to exclude the Czar from the Baltic, “the interest of our State ought to be no less a spur to quicken us to that attempt. By the interest of our State 1 would he understood to mean neither the party measures of a Ministry, nor any foreign motives of a court, but precisely what is, and ever must be, the immediate concern, either for the safety, ease, dignity, or emolument of the Crown, as well as the common weal of Great Britain.” With respect to the Baltic, it has “from the earliest period of our naval power” always been considered a fundamental interest of our State; first, to prevent the rise there of any new maritime Power; and, secondly, to maintain the balance of power between Denmark and Sweden.

“One instance of the wisdom and foresight of our then truly British statesmen is the peace at Stolbowa, in the year 1617.^[126] James the First was the mediator of that treaty, by which the Muscovite was obliged to give up all the provinces which he then was possessed of in the Baltic, and to be barely an inland power on this side of Europe.”

The same policy of preventing a new maritime power from starting in the Baltic was acted upon by Sweden and Denmark.