Page:The New Protectionism.djvu/93

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NAVIGATION LAWS
69

systematic smuggling, which defrauded the English revenue. And the provision against imports of non-national produce by foreign ships seems to have set the Dutch upon extending their manufactures. Thus, a French writer on Dutch trade in 1700, referring to the English Act of 1651, states that the Dutch 'had not then anything like the manufactures they have at this moment.'"[1]


But if history is not encouraging to the project of reviving Navigation Acts, consideration of the economic results likely to follow from a new experiment along these lines is still more unfavourable. The first obvious effect of excluding German ships from our ports will be that British ships will be excluded from German ports. Now, since the British tonnage entering German ports before the war was about four times as great as the German shipping entering British ports, this first effect of a mutual boycott would be to our disadvantage. The next effect would be to put all the trade

  1. ↑ "Shipping after the War," pp. 19, 20.
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