After the Restoration, English shipping in creased rapidly; but it is not easy to estimate the precise effect of the acts in building up the maritime power of England. The English mercantile marine doubled between the Restor ation and the Revolution and continued to grow all through the 18th century. Petty, writing in 1699 (Political Arithmetic,' pp. 258-259), said that shipping had increased three or four fold in the last 40 years; and Child (Discourse of Trade,' 1695), chronicles the great increase of "Wharfs and Keys" to accommodate the grow ing trade. It is exceedingly difficult to esti mate the extent to which this increased pros perity was due to other factors as well as the Navigation Acts. The English had been push ing trade in all directions after 1660; Charles II had concluded a series of trade treaties which gave great openings to English mer chants; the banking system was developing with increased facilities for traders; the old system of a steady but restricted trade car ried on by merchant companies was giving way to the new principles of pushing trade any where and by all means. All these things contributed to increase the demand for ship ping. But without the Navigation Acts it might have been Dutch shipping that would have profited, since Holland carried at much cheaper rates than any other nation. At any rate the acts did secure that the increase of trade should benefit national shipping, although in the Baltic trades the results were at first disastrous. The English had not sufficient shipping for the trade, hence they could not get timber, and accordingly English ship building was hampered. It indeed became necessary to relax the restrictions as far as Norway and Sweden were concerned for three years (7 & 8 W. III, c. 22) to get in naval stores.
The policy of the acts was attacked as tending to increase prices and limit trade. But the answer always was that this kingdom is an island the defence whereof hath always been our shipping and seamen," and that there fore "profit and power ought jointly to be con sidered," and Child, who thus anticipated Adam Smith in his doctrine that defence is more than opulence, added "1 think none can deny that the Act of Navigation hath and doth occasion building and employing three times the number of ships and seamen that otherwise we should or would do." Decker in 1766 referred to it as "that most glorious bulwark of our trade." (High Duties,' p. 21). Lord Sheffield called it in 1783 "the guardian of the prosperity of Britain?' and even Adam Smith says "National animosity at that particular time aimed at the very same object which the most deliberate wisdom would have recommended." Thus contemporaries seem to have believed that the policy.of the Navigation Acts was ef fecting its object and that it did actually build up the maritime power of Great Britain. To that policy Parliament held steadily till the end of the 18th century.
The result of the acts on the colonial system is also a matter of dispute. They have been unjustly blamed as being the cause of much friction between the colonies and the mother country. Indeed they have been alleged to be one of the primary causes of the loss of the American colonies. It must, however, be re membered that the acts were by no means strictly adhered to in the 17th century either in England or the colonies. Especially was this true in the case of New England where smuggling seems to have attained the dignity of a profession. In 1696 it accordingly became necessary to the Board of Trade, and Courts of Admiralty were established in the colonies to see to the more stringent en forcement of the law. A period of lax admin istration, however, began again with Walpole and lasted till the time of the Seven Years' War, when an attempt was once more made to stop evasions. After 1763 the acts were to be worked so as to afford a revenue by which the colonies should contribute part of the cost of their own defence. Before that year the acts
do not seem to have inflicted any great hard ship on the colonists, and the commercial mo nopoly the statutes sought to enforce was scarcely resented. "Whenever the act pressed hard many individuals indeed evaded it," was Burke's dictum, and this was certainly true as regards the trade between New England and the French West Indies and Newfoundland. The colonists obtained from those places the French manufactures which according to law they were bound to get from England, but no serious attempt seems to have been made previous to 1763 to stop this illegal trade.
Again, the bringing of the "enumerated" commodities to England involved no very great hardship. England was the natural market for those goods, she being best able to undertake the distributing business in Europe with her old established connections. Where the "enum erations)" worked hardly they could be relaxed, as was done in the case of rice in 1730. More over, in return for the restrictions thus im posed bounties were given to the colonists on the production of naval stores and copper. The growth of tobacco was put down in Eng land so as to give the colonists a monopoly of the market. Another compensation was af forded to the colonies in the great development of shipbuilding and the carrying trade due to the protection given by the acts to colonial shipping. Massachusetts not merely sold ships in Europe, but in England itself. The causes of the loss of the larger part of the first Eng lish Empire do not lie in the trade policy of the Navigation Acts.
In the 18th century the Dutch were outdis tanced and England at last attained the posi tion at which she had aimed of being the great carrier of the world. There is, however, no evidence to prove that the Dutch were injured vitally by the English Navigation Acts. The English colonial trade even at the end of the 17th century was only a small trade in the ag gregate, and could not have been any very great Joss to Holland at the time. The ultimate loss to the Dutch was no doubt great, since they were shut out of a branch of commerce which was capable of great development. The Dutch decline did not begin till 75 years after the passing of the act of 1651. It was the in crease in the volume of English trade while the Dutch trade remained stationary that raised England to the predominant mercantile posi tion.
Between 1796 and 1822 many minor rela tions of the Navigation Acts were placed upon the statute book. Between 1822 and 1826 Eng land's policy was materially changed. Reci procity in matters of navigation took the place of monopoly. This involved also an alteration in the relations between the colonies and the mother country, To retain for the mother country the bulk of the colonial trade a sys tem of preferential duties was established within the empire. Between 1849 and 1854 the restrictions on foreign shipping and the colonial trade which were embodied in the Navigation Acts were wholly swept away owing mainly to the adoption of free trade.
'Surveys, Historic and Economic' (1900), see chapter on °The Commercial Legislation of England and the American Colonies, 1660-1760' ; Beer, G. L., 'The Commercial Policy of England Toward the American Colonies' (1893) : Bruce, P. A., 'Economic History of Virginia in the 17th Century> (1896) ; Child, Sir J., 'New Dis course of Trade' (1694) ; Coke, R., 'Dis course of Trade' (1670) ; Cunningham, W., 'Growth of English Industry and Commerce' (4th ed. 1903) ; Lindsay, W. S., 'History of Merchant Shipping' (1876) ; Macculloch, J. R., 'Navigation Acts' in 'Dictionary of Com merce' • Northcote, Sir S. H., 'A Short Re view of the History of the Navigation Laws of England' (1849) ; .Reeves, J., 'The Law of Shipping and Navigation from the time of Edward III to the end of 1806' (1807) ; Weeden, W. B., 'Economic and Social History of New England' (1890).