ies. From European ports goods could be brought to England
only in English vessels or in vessels the property of merchants of the
country in which the port lay; and similarly for export. These acts
were directed especially against the Dutch merchants, who were fast
getting control of the carrying trade. The result of the policy of the
Navigation Acts was to secure to English merchants and to English
shipbuilders a monopoly of all the trade with the East Indies and
Africa and with the American colonies, and to prevent the Dutch from
competing with English merchants for the greater part of the trade
with the Continent of Europe.

The characteristics of English commerce in this period, therefore,
were much the same as in the last. It was, however, still more
completely controlled by English merchants and was vastly extended in
amount. Moreover, this extension bid fair to be permanent, as it was
largely brought about by the growth of populous English colonies in
Ireland and America, and by the acquisition of great spheres of
influence in India.

*53. Finance.*--The most characteristic changes of the period now being
studied were in a field to which attention has been but slightly
called before; that is, in finance. Capital had not existed in any
large amounts in mediaeval England, and even in the later centuries
there had not been any considerable class of men whose principal
interest was in the investment of saved-up capital which they had in
their hands. Agriculture, manufacturing, and even commerce were
carried on with very small capital and usually with such capital as
each farmer, artisan, or merchant might have of his own; no use of
credit to obtain money from individual men or from banks for
industrial purposes being ordinarily possible. Questions connected
with money, capital, borrowing, and other points of finance came into
somewhat greater prominence with the sixteenth century, but they now
attained an altogether new and more important notice.

Taxation, which had been looked upon as abnormal and occasional during
earlier times, and only justifiable when some special need for large
expenditure by the government arose, such as war, a royal marriage, or
the entertainment of some foreign visitor, now, after long conflicts
between King and Parliament, which are of still greater constitutional
than financial importance, came to be looked upon as a regular normal
custom. In 1660, at the Restoration, a whole system