own Colony. The establishment of the American settlements was the first step on the part of the English people towards a successful competition with the Dutch merchant marine. That the English authorities should have shown so much opposition to the commerce that sprang up between Virginia and Holland at an early period, was precisely what was to have been anticipated, that Colony having been founded to be a market where English wares were to be exchanged for Virginian commodities; if Dutch bottoms were to be allowed to take the place of English, in transportation to and from Europe, and if Dutch goods were to be permitted to exclude English goods from Virginia, and Virginian commodities were to be sold in Dutch markets instead of in English, then one of the main purposes of colonization would end in failure. It was principally to secure a monopoly of the carrying trade of the American dependencies that the famous Navigation Acts were passed, and they were eminently successful, so far as Virginia was involved, in accomplishing their object.[1]
An additional reason urged in favor of forming a company for the colonization of Virginia was, that the settlement of that country would furnish a vent for the surplus population of England. Sir George Peckham, writing about 1583 on the subject of Western Plantations, had anticipated this argument in his declaration that if a colony were established by the English in America,
- ↑ Professor Rogers, in his History of Agriculture and Prices in England, vol. V, p. 444, expresses doubt as to whether the Navigation Acts promoted the growth of the English mercantile marine. “English commerce and English shipping grew,” he remarks, “but not so rapidly as to prove these Acts could be credited with the result.” Professor Rogers was an uncompromising advocate of the freest trade. Cunningham takes a different view of the influence of the Acts. See Growth of English Industry and Commerce, pp. 112, 113.
