parliaments of Bordeaux and Brittany.[34]

A further indication of the economical convictions of the French
people, and of the impression made upon Europe generally by the
success of the British Navigation Act, is to be seen in the fact that
in 1794, under the Republic, the National Convention issued a decree
identical in spirit, and almost identical in terms, with the English
Act of 1651. In the latter year, said the report of the Committee to
the Convention, "one-half the navigation of England was carried on by
foreigners. She has imperceptibly retaken her rights. Towards the year
1700 foreigners possessed no more than the fifth part of this
navigation; in 1725 only a little more than the ninth; in 1750 a
little more than a twelfth; and in 1791 they possessed only the
fourteenth part of it."[35] It is perhaps unnecessary to add that the
colonial system of Spain was as rigid as that of Great Britain, though
far less capably administered. So universal was the opinion of the
day as to the relation of colonies to navigation, that a contemporary
American, familiar with the general controversy, wrote: "Though
speculative politicians have entertained doubts in regard to favorable
effects from colonial possessions, taking into view the expenses of
their improvement, defence, and government, no question has been made
but that the monopoly of their trade greatly increases the commerce of
the nations to which they are appurtenant."[36] Very soon after the
adoption of the Constitution, the Congress of the United States, for
the development of the carrying trade, enacted provisions analogous to
the Navigation Act, so far as applicable to a nation having no
colonies, but with large shipping and coasting interests to be
favored.

To such accepted views, and to such traditional practice, the
independence of the thirteen British colonies upon the American
continent came not only as a new political fact, but as a portentous
breach in the established order of things. As such, it was regarded
with uneasy jealousy by both France and Spain; but to Great Britain it
was doubly ominous. Not only had she lost a reserved market, singly
the most valuable she possessed, but she had released, however
unwillingly, a formidable and recognized rival for the carrying trade,
the palladium of her naval strength. The market she was not without
hopes of regaining, by a compulsion which, though less direct, would
be in effect as real as that enforced by