ent. "Every commercial
consideration has been repeatedly urged," wrote John Adams, the first
United States Minister to Great Britain, "but to no effect; seamen,
the Navy, and power to strike an awful blow to an enemy at the first
outbreak of war, are the ideas which prevail."[11] This object, and
this process, are familiar to us in these later days under the term
"mobilization;" the military value of which, if rapidly effected, is
well understood.

In this light, and in the light of the preceding experience of a
hundred and fifty years, we must regard the course of the British
Ministry through that period, extremely critical to both nations,
which began when our War of Independence ended, and issued in the War
of 1812. We in this day are continually told to look back to our
fathers of the Revolutionary period, to follow their precepts, to
confine ourselves to the lines of their policy. Let us then either
justify the British ministries of Pitt and his successors, in their
obstinate adherence to the traditions they had received, or let us
admit that even ancestral piety may be carried too far, and that
venerable maxims must be brought to the test of existing conditions.

The general movement of maritime intercourse between countries is
commonly considered under two principal heads: Commerce and
Navigation. The first applies to the interchange of commodities,
however effected; the second, to their transportation from port to
port. A nation may have a large commerce, of export and import,
carried in foreign vessels, and possess little shipping of its own.
This is at present the condition of the United States; and once, in
far gone days, it was in great measure that of England. In such case
there is a defect of navigation, consequent upon which there will be a
deficiency of native seamen; of seamen attached to the country and its
interests, by ties of birth or habit. For maritime war such a state
will have but small resources of adaptable naval force; a condition
dangerous in proportion to its dependence upon control of the sea.
Therefore the attention of British statesmen, during the period in
which the Navigation Act flourished, fastened more and more upon the
necessity of maintaining the navigation of the kingdom, as
distinguished from its commerce. Subsidiary to the movement of
commerce, there is a third factor, relatively stationary, the
consideration of which is probably less familiar now than it was to
the contempo