A well-known feature of the era of the so-called mercantile system was the Navigation Acts, passed in 1651 and 1660 for the protection of British shipping and commerce as against foreign countries. They prohibited the importation of goods into England or any of its dependencies in other than English bottoms, except only in the ships of a foreign country of which the merchandise imported was the genuine growth or manufacture; and in the case of the English ships it was required that the master and three-fourths of the mariners should also be English. The intention of the Acts, to judge from the preamble, was to encourage, by the exclusion of foreign competitors, the ships, seamen, and commerce of Great Britain; and no departure from this policy took place until the middle of the nineteenth century. It was by no means an ideal policy, for it deliberately cramped the expansion of colonial trade to benefit the Mother Country. But it is admitted by Adam Smith that during the epoch of the mercantile system two foremost objects of English statesmanship were attained, namely, the supremacy of England on the seas, and the furtherance of English commerce, shipping, and manufactures.
The mercantile system or doctrine did not owe its rise to dogmatic theory or scientific speculation. It was rather the outcome of practical activities, influenced by the force of surrounding events and special exigencies. Cromwell was keenly alive to the rivalry of Holland, and Sully and Colbert practised a carefully considered limitation on the importation of foreign goods into France; while the advance of French manufacture was the talk of Europe. The diminution of the commercial fleets of the Italian republics, and the decadence of their trade, owing partly to the discovery of America and of a passage to the East Indies, and partly to internal troubles, had already given openings to other Powers. All these and other circumstances combined to inaugurate the Cromwellian policy of restrictive legislation against foreign ships, during which—whether
