THE NAVIGATION ACT

Delivered in the Senate of the United States, on April 3, 1818

A

GRICULTURE, manufactures, and foreign commerce

are the true source of the wealth and power of nations. Agriculture is the chief and well rewarded occupation of our people, and yields, in addition to what we want for our own use, a great surplus for exportation. Manufactures are making a sure and steady progress; and, with the abundance of food and of raw materials, which the country affords, will, at no distant day, be sufficient, in the principal branches, for our own consumption, and furnish a valuable addition to our exports. But, without shipping and seamen, the surpluses of agriculture and of manufactures would depreciate on our hands: the cotton, tobacco, breadstuffs, provisions, and manufactures would turn out to be of little worth, unless we have ships and mariners to carry them abroad, and to distribute them in the foreign markets.

Nations have adopted different theories, as respects the assistance to be derived from navigation; some have been content with a passive foreign commerce-owning no ships themselves, but depending on foreigners and foreign vessels to bring them their supplies, and to purchase of them their surpluses; while others, and almost every modern nation that borders upon the ocean, have preferred an active foreign trade, carried on, as far as consistent with the reciprocal rights of others, by national ships and seamen.

A dependence upon foreign navigation subjects those who are so dependent, to the known disadvantages from foreign wars, and to the expense and risk of the navigation of belligerent nations-the policy of employing a national shipping is, therefore, almost universally approved and adopted: it affords not only a more certain means of prosecuting foreign commerce, but the freight, as well as the profits of trade, are added VOL. I.-13

193

to the stock of the nation. The value and importance of national shipping and seamen, have created among the great maritime powers, and particularly in England, a strong desire to acquire, by restrictions and exclusions, a disproportionate share of the general commerce of the world. As all nations have equal rights, and each may claim equal advantages in its intercourse with others, the true theory of international commerce is one of equality, and of reciprocal benefits; this theory gives to enterprise, to skill and to capital, their just and natural advantages; any other scheme is artificial; and so far as it aims at advantages over those who adhere to the open system, it aims at profit at the expense of natural justice.

The colonial system being founded in this vicious theory, has, therefore, proved to be the fruitful source of dissatisfaction, insecurity and war. According to this system the colonies were depressed below the rank of their fellow-subjects, and the fruits of their industry and their intercourse with foreign countries, placed under different regulations from those of the inhabitants of the mother-country. It was the denial to Americans of the rights enjoyed by Englishmen, that produced the American revolution-and the same cause, greatly aggravated, is producing the same effect in South America.

Among the navigators and discoverers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Dutch became highly distinguished, and, by enterprise, economy, and perseverance, made themselves the carriers of other nations, and their country the entrepôt of Europe-and it was not until the middle of the last mentioned century, that England passed her Navigation Act, which had for its object, to curtail the navigation of the Dutch and to extend her own.

According to this act, the whole trade and intercourse between England, Asia, Africa, and America, were confined to the shipping and mariners of England; and the intercourse between England and the rest of Europe was placed under regulations which, in a great measure, confined the same to English ships. and English seamen. This act was strenuously opposed by the Dutch, and proved the occasion of the obstinate naval wars that afterwards followed. England was victorious; persisted in her Navigation Act, and, in the end, broke down the monopoly in trade which the Dutch had until then possessed.

That in vindication of her equal right to navigate the ocean, England should have resisted the monopoly of the Dutch, and freely expended her blood and treasure to obtain her just share of the general commerce, deserved the approbation of all impartial men. But, having accomplished this object, that she should herself aim at, and in the end establish, the same exclusive system, and on a more extended scale, is neither consistent with her own laudable principles, nor compatible with the rights of others; who, relatively to her monopoly now, are in the like situation towards England, as England was towards the Dutch, when she asserted and made good her rights against them.

By the English Act of Navigation, the trade of her colonies is restrained to the dominions of the mother-country; and none but English ships, "whereof the master and three-fourths of her mariners are English," are allowed to engage in it.

So long as colonies are within such limits as leaves to other nations a convenient resort to foreign markets for the exchange of the goods which they have to sell, for those they want to buy, so long this system is tolerable; but if the power of a state enables it to increase the number of its colonies and dependent territories, so that it becomes the mistress of the great military and commercial stations throughout the globe, this extension of dominion, and the consequent monopoly of commerce, seem to be incompatible with, and necessarily to abridge the equal rights of other states.

In the late debates of the English Parliament, the minister in the House of Lords stated, "that instead of seventeen thousand men, employed abroad in 1791, forty-one thousand were then (1816) required, exclusive of those that were serving in France and in India. That England now has forty-three principal colonies, in all of which troops are necessary; that sixteen of these principal colonies were acquired since 1791, and six of them had grown into that rank from mere colonial dependen

And in the House of Commons the minister, alluding to the acquisitions made during the late war with France, said, "that England had acquired what, in former days, would have been thought a romance-she had acquired the keys of every great military station.'

Thus the commercial aggrandizement of England has be

come such, as that the men who protested against monopoly, and devised the Navigation Act to break it down, could never have anticipated. And it may, ere long, concern other nations to inquire whether laws and principles, applicable to the narrow limits of English dominion and commerce, at the date of the Navigation Act, when colonies and commerce, and even navigation itself, were comparatively in their infancy; laws and principles aimed against monopoly, and adopted to secure to England her just share in the general commerce and navigation, ought to be used by England to perpetuate in her own hands a system equally as exclusive, and far more comprehensive, than that which she was the chief agent to abolish.

Our commercial system is an open one-our ports and commerce are free to all. We neither possess, nor desire to possess, colonies; nor do we object that others should possess them, subject to the ordinary rules and regulations of the colonial system, unless thereby the general commerce of the world be so abridged, that we are restrained in our intercourse with foreign countries wanting our supplies, and furnishing in return, those which we stand in need of.

It is not, however, to the colonial system, but to a new principle, which, in modern times, has been incorporated with those of the Navigation Act, that we now object. According to this act, no direct trade or intercourse can be carried on between a colony and a foreign country; but yet, by the free port bill, passed in the present reign, the English contraband trade, which had been long pursued, in violation of Spanish laws, between the English and Spanish colonies, was sanctioned and regulated by an English act of Parliament; and, since the independence of the United States, England has passed laws, opening an intercourse and trade between her West India colonies and the United States, and, excluding the shipping and seamen of the United States, has confined the same to English ships and seamen; thus departing not only from the principles of the Navigation Act, which she was at liberty to do, by opening a direct intercourse between the colonies and a foreign country, but controlling, which she had no authority to do, the reciprocal rights of the United States to employ their own vessels to carry it on.

Colonies, being parts of the nation, are subject to its regula

tions, and, according to the practice of Europe, they have been considered as a monopoly of the mother-country; but, as has been stated in former discussions of this subject, when an intercourse and trade are once opened between colonies and a foreign country, the foreign country becomes a party, and thereby has a reciprocal claim to employ its own vessels and seamen equally in the intercourse and trade with such colonies, as with any other part of the nation to which they belong.

Governments owe it to the trust confided to them, carefully to watch over, and by all suitable means to promote, the general welfare; and while, on account of a small or doubtful inconvenience, they will not disturb a beneficial intercourse between their own people and a foreign country, they ought not to omit the interposition of their corrective authority, whenever an important public interest is invaded, or the national reputation affected. "It is good not to try experiments in states unless the necessity be urgent, or the utility evident; and it is well to beware, that it be the reformation that draweth on the change, and not the desire of change that pretendeth the reformation." In this case the importance of the reformation is seen and acknowledged by everyone, and the delay that has occurred in the making of it may call for explanation.

We are unable to state with accuracy the tonnage and seamen employed before the revolution, in the trade between the territories of the United States and the other English colonies; but it is known to have been a principal branch of the American navigation. The colonies that England has since acquired from France, Spain, and Holland, together with the increased population of the old colonies, require more ships and seamen to be employed in the trade now, than were engaged in it before the independence of the United States. Without reference to the tonnage and trade between the United States and the English West India colonies, during the late wars between England and France, which, by reason of the suspension of the English Navigation Act, and the neutrality of the United States, will not afford a correct standard by which the tonnage and trade in time of peace can be ascertained: our custom-house returns are the best documents that we can consult upon this subject. According to a late report from the department of the treasury, the tonnage employed in this trade during the year 1816, which