What terrified ignorance had done before, greed did now, and the last
hindrance was almost worse than the first. So one might say,
impatiently, looking at the great expense, the energy, and time and life
spent on the voyages of this time, and especially of the years 1444-8.
More than forty ships sail out, more than nine hundred captives are
brought home, and the new lands found are all discovered by three or
four explorers. National interest seems awakened to very little purpose.
But what explains the slow progress of discovery, explains also the
fact that any progress, however slow, was made at all, apart from the
personal action of Henry himself. Without the mercantile interest, the
Prince's death would have been the end and ruin of his schemes for many
a year.
But for the hope of adventure and of profitable plunder, and the
certainty of reward; but for the assurance, so to say, of such and such
a revenue on the ventures of the time, Portuguese "public opinion" would
not probably have been much ahead of other varieties of the same organ.
In deciding the abstract question to which the Prince had given his
life, the mob of Lisbon or of Lagos would hardly have been quicker than
modern mobs to rise to a notion above that of personal gain.
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