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THE NEW PROTECTIONISM

divert carrying trade from her to England, not as a military menace.

"2. Their real effect was to hamper English trade in all directions, one of the first results being a serious increase in prices and in the cost of shipbuilding. From twenty to ninety years after the passing of the first, English writers lament continued English inferiority to Holland in shipping and commerce.

"3. Failing alike to promote English shipping and to depress Dutch, they obviously added nothing to English naval power as against Holland.

"4. We have express English testimonies to the operation of superior Dutch power, in addition to supremacy in trade, many years after the first enactment; and it was after it had run for twenty-two years that the Dutch raided the Medway.

"5. In particular, the main fields to be cultivated for the furnishing of seamen, the fisheries, were in no way improved by the monopoly policy, and seem to have been positively depressed by it. 'The numbers employed in Holland by their fishery is prodigious,' writes Harrison in 1744 (p. 24). 'I fear ours bear no comparison.'

"6. Even the trade between Holland and England soon developed anew by way of

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