ose from the colonies, from
or to a foreign country,--from or to France, for example,--must first
be landed in England before proceeding to the ultimate destination.
Yet even this cherished provision, enforced against the foreigner, was
made to subserve the carrying trade--the leading object; for, upon
re-exportation to the colonies, there was allowed a drawback of duties
paid upon admission to England, and permanent upon residents there.
The effect of this was to make the articles cheaper in the colonies
than in England itself, and so to induce increased consumption. It was
therefore to the profit of the carrier; and the more acceptable,
because the shipping required to bring home colonial goods was much in
excess of that required for outward cargoes, to the consequent
lowering of outward freights. "A regard to the profits of freights,"
writes a contemporary familiar with the subject, "as much as the
augmentation of seamen, dictated this policy."[32] From the
conditions, it did not directly increase the number of seamen; but by
helping the shipping merchant it supported the carrying industry as a
whole.

Upon the legislative union of Scotland with England, in 1707, this
_entrepot_ privilege, with all other reserved advantages of English
trade and commerce, was extended to the northern kingdom, and was a
prominent consideration in inducing the Scotch people to accept a
political change otherwise distasteful, because a seeming sacrifice of
independence. Before this time they had had their own navigation
system, modelled on the English; the Acts of the two parliaments
embodying certain relations of reciprocity. Thenceforward, the
Navigation Act is to be styled more properly a British, than an
English, measure; but its benefits, now common to all Great Britain,
were denied still to Ireland.

It will be realized that the habit of receiving exclusive favors at
the expense of a particular set of people--the colonist and the
foreigner--readily passed in a few generations into an unquestioning
conviction of the propriety, and of the necessity, of such measures.
It should be easy now for those living under a high protective tariff
to understand that, having built up upon protection a principal
national industry,--the carrying trade,--involving in its
ramifications the prosperity of a large proportion of the
wealth-producers of the country, English statesmen would fear to touch
the fabric in any important part; and that their