The delusion launched. A.D. 1382. First Navigation Act amended. Stat. 1, 6 Richard II. c. 8. The wonder is, that with such regulations, there was any navy at all, which, doubtless, there would not have been, had not enterprise and ingenuity found means to tack about these complicated cross-currents and adverse winds of law. Trade and shipping increased, not by their help, but in spite of them, as the oak of which the ships were built grew in spite of frost, and storm, and flood, and drought. This third chapter of the 5th of Richard the Second, was the first official announcement, of the ever since cherished delusion, That PARLIAMENT COULD MAKE THE NAVY GREAT. Richard II. believed that the protective system could make his little Dutch-built, open-boat fleet, into a great navy. Four hundred and sixty-six years have passed since then, but that wisdom of our ancestors has descended, with all its gatherings, to protectionist statesmen and shipowners' associations; no more than Richard, do they know that there is no way to make a great navy but by a great foreign trade. All increase of shipping they attribute to Acts of Parliament, none to increase of population, and industry, and wealth; according to them, all good is the result of restriction and protection, and only evil springs from enterprise and competition. Experience has taught them nothing; the WORD PROTECTION has so mystified and deluded them, that they are martyrs to it, and let it bind them down to inferiority and decay. vain is it shown unanswerably, that protected trades have never prospered, that in the race they linger far behind, whilst the unprotected make rapid progress. They refuse to acknowledge what is daily before their eyes, that the impulse of competition rouses into action the utmost energy and ingenuity, so that men invent, adapt, cheapen, seek out markets, and spread their trade in all directions. In The first Navigation Act did not work well, and had, in the next year, to be amended. It was then enacted, "That English merchants being in foreign ports, and not finding any sufficient English vessels there, might ship their goods on board foreign vessels," a help to trade that was no doubt "That rendered useless by a law made eight years afterwards, Like enough they urged, that the British shipowners cared only for the defences of the realm, for the glory of the wooden walls of Old England, for the increase of the English navy. So say their craft now. High freights were far too beggarly an element for them to think of. They would have it to be understood, that they were shipowners from pure patriotism, and so they probably said, "Don't let these foreigners compete with us in cargoes outward, send them home in ballast, the disinterested motives and right earnest patriotism of your Majesty's shipowners are beyond all doubt, therefore don't let our freights be beaten down by competition, but be it enacted by, and with the authority of Parliament, that we shall carry for reasonable freights." A.D. 1390. English ship owners to carry for reasonable freights. THE WISDOM OF OUR ANCESTORS. From the time of the first Navigation Act, kings, parliaments and shipowners, had no quiet. The idea took possession of them, that gold and ships must be incessantly watched, or they would make off out of the country; there was no chance of a navy, unless acts, ordinances, and proclamations, were its sheet-anchor, cable, and harbour of refuge. Our poor ancestors were haunted and hag-ridden by the notion, that some breezy night every ship in England, great A.D. 1409. and small, would slip cable, hoist sails, and be out to sea; and that carrying off all the gold, they would go over to some vile foreigners, and never be heard of again; and so England would have no navy, no gold, no trade, no towns, no anything, but desolation and ruin. To avert which calamities abundance of laws were made, and the honest trade being sorely crippled, the shipowners employed themselves in piracies and plunders, and petty wars with the merchants and seamen of the Continent, by suppression of which, Henry IV. did something really to advance the commerce and manufactures of the kingdom. A very small commerce, however, it must have been, for the whole revenue in Henry V.th's time was but £55,743. 10s. 101d.,* and with all the nursing of Parliament, the navy does not seem to have been got into any very secure condition, for chap. eight of the 1st of Henry VII., being more than a hundred years after the first Navigation Act, sets out with a preamble stating the danger to be apprehended from a decay of the navy, and the seamen Danger of decay being unemployed; and it was therefore enacted, "That no Revenue in Henry the V.'s time. A.D. 1421. of the navy. Majority of seamen must be king's subjects. person should buy or sell any wine, of the growth of Guienne or Gascoigne, in England, Ireland, Wales, Calais, or Berwick, unless it were imported in a vessel belonging to England, Ireland or Wales, and navigated principally by natives of England, Wales, Ireland or Calais."† This is the first act declaring that a majority of the seamen must be the king's subjects, and we have, at this early date, upon the Statute Book the leading principles of all subsequent Navigation Acts. First, that certain goods must be imported and exported only in British ships. Second, that First principles those ships must be manned by a majority of Englishmen. Third, that these enactments were for the increase of the mercantile navy. Fourth, that the navy was in return for so much care to be subject to impressment for war service. of all Naviga tion Acts. At this period, there were seven years to come before America was discovered, sixty-nine years before the first ship * Macpherson, vol. i. p. 634. + Idem, vol. i. p. 706. found its way into a Russian port, and ninety years before the first venture by the Cape of Good Hope to India.* The trade of England, therefore, had not yet room to be great. Discovery has, since then, given us new worlds, new powers of production, new millions of customers, and boundless wealth. Generation after generation has inherited increased and everincreasing aptness for manufactures and commerce, our whole knowledge of the world, our whole relations with mankind, have been changed; but the principle of the Navigation Laws, that sought to nurse the little navy of that little trade, remain unchanged, save that in time of war the ships are spared and only the sailors are impressed. Government now builds its own ships, but does not train its own seamen. We have not been able to discover that the modern practice is in any way an improvement upon the old. For all we can see to the contrary, the ships might as well be carried off with the men; and there would be this advantage in it, that the shipowner would be sure of payment for the use and abuse of his ship, but he gets no compensation for the loss of his able seamen who are carried off suddenly by force, just when their services are most wanted in trade. And with such reckless tyranny was this impressment by force carried on in the late war, "that at its conclusion there was scarce an able seaman left in the whole mercantile marine of this country;" and it may be safely inferred that there was scarcely an effective commercial ship. This being the condition on which the Navigation Laws are held, the shipowners might do well to ask themselves "whether it be worth going through so much to get so little." To a plain understanding, it seems very like "buying protection at too high a price." True, the merchant may keep his ship safe enough, the law guards him against foreign competition. His sailors * 1st Henry VIII. c. 8, 1485. America discovered 1492. Commencement of Maritime Commerce with the Russian Empire 1554. First voyage round the Cape 1395. Vide Merchant Seamen's Registration Act. are ticketed and watched over affectionately in time of peace, in the nurseries of British seamen, but when war breaks out, there is a clean sweep of the nurseries-away go the British seamen to be shot at; and the British merchant ships, unmanned, just when they want hands most, may betake themselves into quiet harbours, and leave Americans (to whom likely enough, by way of escape from press-gangs, our merchant seamen might engage themselves) to carry on the shipping business of the world. Chap. the Eight of Henry VII. having set itself to prevent decay of the navy, Chap. the Ninth gives a list of articles not to be imported at all, for the next twenty years. * We are not told whether these imports were forbidden, expressly to prevent the decay of the navy, or at the request of shipowners; but we may surmise that they were, for it is on record, that shipowners petitioned against the free admission of foreign corn; setting forth, that the navy would be ruined, and the defences of the country broken up, if at all times the corn of other lands were admitted into England. Not that the corn would float over of itself, or was to be brought from some new-found inland region by waggons or railroads. No, it must, every quarter of it, be carried by ships. The consumers of it had no choice but to be customers to shipowners. Corn was to be added to all the goods that hitherto ships had found it profitable to carry. Here was an immense population certain year by year to consume an increasing quantity, each million quarters of it would weigh Ships and corn. 214,150 tons, and would lade 415 ships, each of 500 tons burden; and this very year, it appears from Parliamentary returns made up from the 5th of January to the 5th of June 1847, that there has been imported in those five months, of grain of all sorts 3,286,702 quarters, and of flour and meal of all kinds 2,627,067 cwts.; it was therefore no over estimate to take the year's import at 4,000,000 quarters, which would be 857,000 tons, and would lade 1700 ships of 500 tons each, * Macpherson, vol. ii. p. 209. |