e-fourth of the crew to be
British. "That the increase in our shipping is to be ascribed to our
navigation system appears in the application of it to the trade of the
United States. When those countries were part of our plantations, a
great portion of our produce was transported to Great Britain and our
West India Islands in American bottoms; they had a share in the
freight of sugars from those islands to Great Britain; they built
annually more than one hundred ships, which were employed in the
carrying trade of Great Britain; but since the Independence of those
states, since their ships have been excluded from our plantations, and
that trade is wholly confined to British ships, we have gained that
share of our carrying trade from which they are now excluded."[26] In
corroboration of the same tendency, it was also noted during the war
with the colonies, that "the shipyards of Britain in every port were
full of employment, so that new yards were set up in places never
before so used."[27] That is, the war, stopping the intrusion of
American colonists into the British carrying trade, just as the
Navigation Act prohibited that of foreign nations, created a demand
for British ships to fill the vacancy; a result perfectly in keeping
with the whole object of the navigation system. But when hostilities
with France began again in 1793, and lasted with slight intermission
for twenty years, the drain of the navy for seamen so limited the
development of the British navigation as to afford an opening for
competition, of which American maritime aptitude took an advantage,
threatening British supremacy and arousing corresponding jealousy.

Besides the increase of national shipping, the idea of _entrepot_
received recognition in both the earlier and later developments of the
system. Numerous specified articles, produced in English colonies,
could be carried nowhere but to England, Ireland, or another colony,
where they must be landed before going farther. Because regularly
listed, such articles were technically styled "enumerated;"
"enumerated commodities being such as must first be landed in England
before being taken to foreign parts."[28] From this privilege Ireland
was soon after excepted; enumerated goods for that country having
first to be landed in England.[29] Among such enumerated articles,
tobacco and rice held prominent places and illustrate the system. Of
the former, in the first half of the eighteenth century, it was
est