by, so far as naval warfare is concerned. Steam and mechanical appliances now do what was before done by wind and sail.
While Mr. Mill thinks navigation laws were economically—that
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is, so far as increase of wealth is concerned—disadvantageous, yet he believes that they may have been “politically expedient.” It is possible, for example, that retaliation by the United States and other countries against England early in this century brought about the remission of the English restrictions on foreign shipping. But it is quite another thing to say that such laws produced an ability to sail ships more cheaply. That the English navigation acts of 1651 built up English shipping is not supported by many proofs; whereas it is very distinctly shown that English shipping languished and suffered under them.360 Moreover, under the régime of steam and iron (which drew out England's peculiar advantages in iron and coal), in all its history English shipping never prospered more than it has since the abolition in 1849 of the navigation laws—events which have taken place since Mr. Mill wrote.
The United States is still weighed down by navigation laws adapted to mediæval conditions, and the relics of a time when retaliation was the cause of their enactment. So long as wooden vessels did the carrying-trade, the natural advantages of the United States gave us a proud position on the ocean. Now, however, when it is a question of cheaper iron, steel, and coal for vessels of iron and steel, we are at a possible disadvantage, and the bulk of navigation laws proposed in these days are intended to draw capital either by raising prices through duties on ships and materials, or by outright bounties and subsidies from industries in which we have advantages, to building ships. And until of late no distinction has been made between ship-building and ship-owning (or ship-sailing). Within the last year (1884) many burdens on ship-sailing have been removed; but even