le to municipal
statutes, Parliament made the carrying industry even more exclusively
than before a preserve for native seamen. The Commonwealth's
requirement, that "the most" of the crew should be English, was
changed to a definite prescription that the master and three-fourths
of the mariners should be so.

Under such enactments, with frequent modification of detail, but no
essential change of method, British shipping and seamen continued to
be "protected" against foreign competition down to and beyond the War
of 1812. In this long interval there is no change of conception, nor
any relaxation of national conviction. The whole history affords a
remarkable instance of persistent policy, pursued consecutively for
five or six generations. No better evidence could be given of its hold
upon the minds of the people, or of the serious nature of the obstacle
encountered by any other state that came into collision with it; as
the United States during the Napoleonic period did, in matters of
trade and carriage, but especially in the closely related question of
Impressment.

Whether the Navigation Act, during its period of vigor, was successful
in developing the British mercantile marine and supporting the British
Navy has been variously argued. The subsequent growth of British
navigation is admitted; but whether this was the consequence of the
measure itself has been disputed. It appears to the writer that those
who doubt its effect in this respect allow their convictions of the
strength of economical forces to blind them to the power of
unremitting legislative action. To divert national activities from
natural channels into artificial may be inexpedient and wasteful; and
it may be reasonable to claim that ends so achieved are not really
successes, but failures. Nevertheless, although natural causes, till
then latent, may have conspired to further the development which the
Navigation Act was intended to promote, and although, since its
abolition, the same causes may have sufficed to sustain the imposing
national carrying trade built up during its continuance, it is
difficult to doubt the great direct influence of the Act itself;
having in view the extent of the results, as well as the corroborative
success of modern states in building up and maintaining other
distinctly artificial industries, sometimes to the injury of the
natural industries of other peoples, which the Navigation Act also in
its day was meant to effect.

Th