Spottiswoode had originally become prominent as an ardent supporter of the strict Presbyterian party, but gradually came to see the inconveniences of "parity in the Church," attributed little importance to the existing matters of dispute, and thought that the interests of both church and state were best secured by keeping on good terms with the king.
Already the desire to make his country a great naval power was becoming his ruling passion, and when he found by experience that the White Sea, Russia's sole maritime outlet, had great practical inconveniences as a naval base, he revived the project of getting a firm footing on the shores of the Black Sea or the Baltic. At first he gave the preference to the former, and with the aid of a flotilla of small craft, constructed on a tributary of the Don, he succeeded in capturing Azov from the Turks.
Before the railway was opened some spinners had been in the habit of making their purchases of raw material in Liverpool, but the great inconveniences of the journey, combined 1 Commercial crop.
Owing principally to differences in the length of the inch in various countries this method had great inconveniences, and now the unit is the refractive power of a lens whose focal length is one metre.
Personal experience of the inconveniences and dangers of the prevailing system of preferment, the so-called myestnichestvo, or rank priority, which had paralysed the Russian armies for centuries, induced him to propose its abolition, which was accomplished by Tsar Theodore III.
