American Colonies formed a new epoch in history, and, by raising up an independent maritime people as direct rivals in the carrying trade of the world, gave a deathblow to a system no longer fitted for the new state of things. During this long interval the theory of trade and navigation became better understood. The French economists,[187] made intelligible and even popular by Adam Smith’s great work, threw a flood of light on the faults prevailing in the most economical distribution of wealth in relation with colonies. But the arguments of theorists would have remained disregarded had the increasing number and influence of the American colonists and the attitude assumed by the Northern maritime powers not rendered it impossible to maintain a system now become obsolete, and the wisdom of the governments of both England and the United States effected a change which has proved not only to be safe, but salutary for all parties interested in this great commercial revolution. [Sidenote: Eventual separation from the mother country considered.] In the middle of the seventeenth century it was indeed unreasonable to expect that England, after her heavy expenditure on settlements all over the globe, would relinquish advantages from which the first adventurers, and ultimately the entire nation, anticipated some return for the amount invested in the plantations and in the ships fitted out for the carrying trade. Even those writers who expatiate on the general unremunerative character of her colonial possessions, with especial reference to Canada, do not consider the foundation of colonies inexpedient, but, on the contrary, admit unreservedly “that colonies have been in their consequences highly advantageous to this, as they have been to most old settled countries in all ages.”[188] Therefore, whatever differences of opinion may prevail respecting the relinquishment of the governmental powers of the mother country over a powerful colony as soon as it is capable of defending itself and of directing its own affairs, every person concurs in the expediency of forming new colonies, their eventual severance from the parent state being only a question of the more or less satisfactory progress they may make towards a position of independence. At the period when the English Navigation Laws were inaugurated in imitation of the successful policy of pre-existing maritime states, there is no doubt that the Dutch[189] naval predominance on the seas rendered the distant possessions of Great Britain not only extremely insecure, but enabled her acute neighbours to carry away part of the prey which had been really acquired by her “bow and spear.” [Sidenote: Views of Sir Josiah Child on the Navigation Laws.] [Sidenote: Relative value of British and foreign ships, 1666.]