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INTERESTS OF GREAT BRITAIN. 407quired, but even to supply vessels completely equipped, andwhich could be used as shipsof war. On this were foundedthe severe measures of Charles, which were directed in thefirst place against the Dutch, but which fell also upon theEnglish, and would almost have annihilated their commercewith the Baltic had they not protecteditby armed vessels.The interest of George I. as elector of Hanover, was therefore not the only cause which induced him to adoptmeasures against Charles, for he had grounds of complaintalso in his character of king of England. Nevertheless it isthe constant reproach of all English writers, that he did notdistinguish between these two interests but that the wish;to preserve the duchies of Bremen and Verden, by whicha communication was opened between his new kingdom andhis German territories, led him to implicate Englandin the-contests of the northern states.It would not be difficult, from what has been already said,to find grounds of defence for George I. but; allowingevery one to form his own judgment upon this point, thereremains another ground which has not been taken by anyEnglish historian with whom I am acquainted, and which isthe most important of all in the determination of the controversy I refer to the question whether the interests ofEngland or Hanover were most nearly concerned in theacquisitionof Bremen and Verden ? And I believe it willnot be difficult to prove that the former were chiefly involved in it,Hanover certainly gained at a sufficiently cheap rate twoprovinces, one of little importance, the other more so, yetneither remarkably fertile, except in those parts which border on the rivers. But then, the latter of the two commandsthe entrance into the two principal rivers, and consequentlythe chief commercial approaches of northern Germany;and thus by its geographical situation becomes of very greatimportance. By the electorate, a country which has notone sea-port nor any commercial town of moment, whichexports comparatively little, and the exports of which, asthey are objects which are not generally classed among contraband commodities, there could not easily be found causesto interfere with, little was gained but this made the ad;From the time that thevantages to England all the greater.