mpire, a kind
of coasting trade, which would naturally, as well as by statute, fall
to British shipping. Protective regulation therefore should develop in
the several parts those productions which other parts needed,--the
material of commerce; but where this could not be done, and supplies
must be sought outside, they should go and come in British vessels,
navigated according to the Act. "Our country," wrote Sheffield, in
concluding his work, "does not entirely depend upon the monopoly of
the commerce of the thirteen American states, and it is by no means
necessary to sacrifice any part of our carrying trade for imaginary
advantages never to be attained."[63]

A further injury was done by the cheapness with which the Americans
built and sold ships, owing to their abundance of timber. They built
them not only to order, but as it were for a market. Although
acceptable to the mercantile interest, and even indirectly beneficial
by sparing the resources for building ships of war, this was an
invasion of the manufacturing industry of the kingdom, in a particular
peculiarly conducive to naval power. The returns of the British
underwriters for twenty-seven shipping ports of Great Britain and
Ireland, during a series of years immediately preceding the American
revolt, no ship being counted twice, showed the British-built vessels
entered to be 3,908, and the American 2,311.[64] The tonnage of the
latter was more than one-third of the total. The intercourse between
the American continent and the West Indies, not included in this
reckoning, was almost wholly in American bottoms. The proportion of
American-built shipping in the total of the empire is hence apparent,
as well as the growth of the ship-building industry. This of course
was accompanied by a tendency of mechanics, as well as seamen, to
remove to a situation so favorable for employment. But the maintenance
of home facilities for building ships was as essential to the
development of naval power as was the fostering of a class of seamen.
In this respect, therefore, the ship-building of America was
detrimental to the objects of the Navigation Act; and the evil
threatened to increase, because of a discernible approaching shortness
of suitable timber in the overtaxed forests of Europe.

Such being the apparent tendency of things, owing to circumstances
relatively permanent in character, the habit of mind traditional with
British merchants and statesmen, formed by the accepte