=438. Reform of the navigation acts.=—This survey of the course of English policy in the first half of the nineteenth century will be closed by the consideration of a third topic, the laws protecting shipping. Reference to a previous chapter will show how severe were the restrictions meant to prevent the competition of foreign shipping, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The period now under consideration was marked by the removal of all these restrictions, and by a great growth, notwithstanding, in the English merchant marine. The establishment of the independence of the United States, and later of the Spanish American republics, overthrew the colonial theory on which many of the navigation acts were based, and forced numerous revisions. The long wars of the Napoleonic period, also, led England to grant privileges to neutral powers in the carrying trade. Important breaches, therefore, had been made in the old system before the century was far advanced, and it was in no condition to withstand the assaults directed against it by people both abroad and at home whose interests it injured. The United States adopted a policy of reprisal which forced England to admit American ships freely to English ports, and threats of similar action by European countries led in 1824 and the years immediately following to a series of treaties putting foreign ships on an equality with English. =439. Final repeal of the navigation acts.=—The navigation acts had grown into a most complicated system, and it is impossible to describe in detail their gradual relaxation. By 1830 English ships had lost all their privileges except in the coasting trade, and in the trade with and between the colonies. Even this amount of protection came to be regarded as a burden not only on commerce but on shipping itself, and was abolished in 1849 and 1854. Every step in the reform of the navigation acts was bitterly fought by adherents of the old system, who prophesied ruin to English shipping if it were denied protection and left to make its own way. How groundless were the fears of those who opposed reform can be seen in the following table, giving in millions the tonnage of English ships in the period 1800-1850: 1800, 1.6; 1810, 2.2; 1820, 2.4; 1830, 2.2; 1840, 2.5; 1850, 3.5. QUESTIONS AND TOPICS 1. Are all taxes of equal amount equally burdensome? Would a country fare as well if it raised its revenue by taxing saws and chisels instead of cigarettes and playing cards? 2. What are the effects of smuggling on (_a_) the public revenue, (_b_) honest merchants, (_c_) consumers? 3. How do the rates of the English tariff, as established at this time, compare with the rates of the present tariff of the United States? 4. On what articles are import duties still levied in Great Britain? [See Statesman’s Year-Book, index, Great Britain, customs.] 5. The corn laws and their effects. [Morley, Cobden, chap. 7; Rand. Ec. hist., chap. 9.]