It has been asserted that these laws at first occasioned loud complaints, to the effect “that while our own people (the English) had not shipping enough to import from all parts the goods they wanted, they were, nevertheless, by the Navigation Act debarred from receiving new supplies of merchandise from other nations, who only could, and till then, did import them.”[180] At a later period it was said “No doubt the people were right, the injustice was not seen at first, but the complaints being unheeded, the wrong dropped out of sight.”[181] No sudden revulsion, however, of a long established policy ever takes place without deep complaints from the parties whose monopoly, real or virtual, has been destroyed. But in this instance these alleged complaints had doubtless their origin in the mortification felt by foreign agents in London, whose principals abroad had for centuries enjoyed an undue share of the shipping trade of this country. [Sidenote: Navigation Act of Charles II.] [Sidenote: The Maritime Charter of England.] During the ten years which followed the passing of the Act of 1651, the Legislature became more and more convinced of the efficacy of these prohibitive laws, and was prepared to render them practically even more stringent. If Charles II. could have reversed any of Cromwell’s legislative measures with advantage or popularity, he and his court would gladly have taken such a step. But Charles and his ministers perceived the advantages which had already accrued from the legislation of the preceding government, and in the first year of his actual reign[182] passed an Act (12 Charles II.) which obtained even from Sir Josiah Child, a liberal and enlightened merchant, the title of ‘The Maritime Charter of England.’[183] This Act may be deemed the complement of the Acts of 1646 and 1651, and its principles continued in force until the year 1849, when, under a totally different state of circumstances, they gave way to a system more liberal and better adapted to preserve that share of the trade of the world, both as manufacturers and carriers of merchandise, which Great Britain had acquired on the transfer of the maritime power of the Dutch to her own people two centuries before. [Sidenote: Its main provisions recited.] [Sidenote: Trade with the Dutch prohibited.]