Turning to events more within our province, it may be mentioned that, on the authority of Sir Josiah Child, the opponents of the Navigation Laws point out with exultation that, thirty years after these stringent Acts came into operation, “the Dutch were beating us in every quarter.” Such may have been the case in some special branches of commerce, but it is undeniable that, from the date of these laws, the merchant navy of England steadily increased; and that soon afterwards the power over the seas previously claimed by the Dutch was permanently transferred to the English. Whatever may have been the cause of these changes, whether the Navigation Acts, or “the stoppage of trade, insecurity of capital, inherited debts, and taxes on ships” sustained by the Dutch during the war, England’s maritime resources increased, while those of Holland declined; and London became what Amsterdam once was, the chief emporium of the commercial world. Perhaps the resolution of England to depend upon her own people instead of courting foreign aid by legislative measures, combined with the exclusion of foreign shipping from her rapidly-increasing colonial trade, had more to do with these changes than the other combined reasons which the political economists of various ages have assigned. [Sidenote: The colonial system.] [Sidenote: Partial anomalies.] [Sidenote: Capital created,] [Sidenote: Economical theories the prelude to final free trade.] By what was known as the “Colonial System,” Great Britain secured not merely the exclusive carrying trade of all produce derived from her own plantations, but she exercised the monopoly of supplying them from this side of the Atlantic with such articles as they required or could afford to consume, while sharing in the carrying trade and commerce of those parts of the world to which she had access in common with other maritime states. Many anomalies and some positive self-injuries, however, sprang out of this exclusive system, which of late years have been exposed in all their deformities. But it cannot be disputed, that whatever flagrant evils the exclusive colonial system engendered it was upon the whole one which tended materially to develop the maritime energies of British shipowners; and the rapidity with which the colonies in the West Indian Archipelago and on the continent of America rose to importance both in wealth and population, demonstrates that though not so advantageous as it otherwise might have been, it was certainly not as disastrous to the colonists as partial American historians would have us believe. There may at first have existed a paucity of sufficient capital and a deficiency of English ships to carry on with the fullest advantage the trade thus created; but this want was speedily supplied, and the foundation laid for an exclusive but highly flourishing trade and navigation, which continued in full vigour for more than a century, when the revolt of the North