y, the perception of Great
Britain's essential need to predominate upon the sea had dawned upon
men's minds, and thence had passed from a vague national consciousness
to a clearly defined national line of action, adopted first through a
recognition of existing conditions of inferiority, but after these had
ceased pursued without any change of spirit, and with no important
changes of detail. This policy was formulated in a series of measures,
comprehensively known as the Navigation Acts, the first of which was
passed in 1651, during Cromwell's Protectorate. In 1660, immediately
after the Restoration, it was reaffirmed in most essential features,
and thenceforward continued to and beyond the times of which we are
writing. In form a policy of sweeping protection, for the development
of a particular British industry,--the carrying trade,--it was soon
recognized that, in substance, its success had laid the foundations of
a naval strength equally indispensable to the country. Upon this
ground it was approved even by Adam Smith, although in direct
opposition to the general spirit of his then novel doctrine. While
exposing its fallacies as a commercial measure, he said it exemplified
one of two cases in which protective legislation was to be justified.
"The defence of Great Britain, for example, depends very much upon the
number of its sailors and shipping. The Act of Navigation therefore
very properly endeavors to give the sailors and shipping of Great
Britain the monopoly of the trade of their own country.... It is not
impossible that some of the regulations of this famous Act may have
proceeded from national animosity. They are as wise, however, as
though they had all been dictated by the most deliberate wisdom....
The Act is not favorable to foreign commerce, nor to the opulence
which can arise from that; but defence is of much more importance than
opulence. The Act of Navigation is perhaps the wisest of all the
commercial regulations of England."[10] It became a dominant
prepossession of British statesmen, even among Smith's converts, in
the conduct of foreign relations, that the military power of the state
lay in the vast resources of native seamen, employed in its merchant
ships. Even the wealth returned to the country, by the monopoly of the
imperial markets, and by the nearly exclusive possession of the
carrying trade, which was insured to British commerce by the elaborate
regulations of the Act, was thought of less mom