The truth of the matter is this.Restrictions on navigation aregoverned by the same law as restrictions upon any other kind oftrade.Freedom of navigation and the carrying trade conducted byforeigners are serviceable and welcome to communities in the earlystages of their civilisation, so long as their agriculture andmanufactures still remain undeveloped.Owing to want of capital andof experienced seamen, they are willing to abandon navigation andforeign trade to other nations.Later on, however, when they havedeveloped their producing power to a certain point and acquiredskill in shipbuilding and navigation, then they will desire toextend their foreign trade, to carry it on in their own ships, andbecome a naval power themselves.Gradually their own mercantilemarine grows to such a degree that they feel themselves in aposition to exclude the foreigner and to conduct their trade to themost distant places by means of their own vessels.Then the timehas come when, by means of restrictions on navigation, a nation cansuccessfully exclude the more wealthy, more experienced, and morepowerful foreigner from participation in the profits of thatbusiness.When the highest degree of progress in navigation andmaritime power has been reached, a new era will set in, no doubt;and such was that stage of advancement which Dr Priestley had inhis mind when he wrote 'that the time may come when it may be aspolitic to repeal this Act as it was to make it.'(7*)Then it is that, by means of treaties of navigation based uponequality of rights, a nation can, on the one hand, secure undoubtedadvantages as against less civilised nations, who will thus bedebarred from introducing restrictions on navigation in their ownspecial behalf; while, on the other hand, it will thereby preserveits own seafaring population from sloth, and spur them on to keeppace with other countries in shipbuilding and in the art ofnavigation.While engaged in her struggle for supremacy, Venice wasdoubtless greatly indebted to her policy of restrictions onnavigation; but as soon as she had acquired supremacy in trade,manufactures, and navigation, it was folly to retain them.Forowing to them she was left behind in the race, both as respectsshipbuilding, navigation, and seamanship of her sailors, with othermaritime and commercial nations which were advancing in herfootsteps.Thus England by her policy increased her naval power,and by means of her naval power enlarged the range of hermanufacturing and commercial powers, and again, by the latter,there accrued to her fresh accessions of maritime strength and ofcolonial possessions.Adam Smith, when he maintains that theNavigation Laws have not been beneficial to England in commercialrespects, admits that, in any case, these laws have increased herpower.And power is more important than wealth.That is indeed thefact.Power is more important than wealth.And why? Simply becausenational power is a dynamic force by which new productive resourcesare opened out, and because the forces of production are the treeon which wealth grows, and because the tree which bears the fruitis of greater value than the fruit itself.Power is of moreimportance than wealth because a nation, by means of power, isenabled not only to open up new productive sources, but to maintainitself in possession of former and of recently acquired wealth, andbecause the reverse of power -- namely, feebleness -- leads to therelinquishment of all that we possess, not of acquired wealthalone, but of our powers of production, of our civilisation, of ourfreedom, nay, even of our national independence, into the hands ofthose who surpass us in might, as is abundantly attested by thehistory of the Italian republics, of the Hanseatic League, of theBelgians, the Dutch, the Spaniards, and the Portuguese.
But how came it that, unmindful of this law of alternatingaction and reaction between political power, the forces ofproduction and wealth, Adam Smith could venture to contend that theMethuen Treaty and the Act of Navigation had not been beneficial toEngland from a commercial point of view? We have shown how Englandby the policy which she pursued acquired power, and by herpolitical power gained productive power, and by her productivepower gained wealth.Let us now see further how, as a result ofthis policy, power has been added to power, and productive forcesto productive forces.
England has got into her possession the keys of every sea, andplaced a sentry over every nation: over the Germans, Heligoland;over the French, Guernsey and Jersey; over the inhabitants of NorthAmerica, Nova Scotia and the Bermudas; over Central America, theisland of Jamaica; over all countries bordering on theMediterranean, Gibraltar, Malta, and the Ionian Islands.Shepossesses every important strategical position on both the routesto India with the exception of the Isthmus of Suez, which she isstriving to acquire; she dominates the Mediterranean by means ofGibraltar, the Red Sea by Aden, and the Persian Gulf by Bushire andKarrack.She needs only the further acquisition of the Dardanelles,the Sound, and the Isthmuses of Suez and Panama, in order to beable to open and close at her pleasure every sea and every maritimehighway.Her navy alone surpasses the combined maritime forces ofall other countries, if not in number of vessels, at any rate infighting strength.