Sophisms of Free-Trade & Popular Political Economy Examined Sir John Barnard Byles

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1878. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XXXI. "The Navigation Laws were useless and injurious" To appreciate the real magnitude of the Andes or the Cordilleras, you must view them from a distance. Near their base the eye is obstructed by meaner elevations, but seen from a distance of fifty miles, Chimborazo pierces the sky. So, as we fall down the stream of time, and recede from the Administration of Oliver Cromwell, its real grandeur gradually breaks upon the mental vision. Cromwell and the Long Parliament devised the Navigation Laws, and founded the British Empire. From that hour the maritime greatness of England dates. From that hour it steadily and uninterruptedly advanced for more than a hundred and fifty years, till at the close of the last war England"s meteor flag floated in every clime, and rode on every sea, undisputed and universal victor. This splendid success did not flow from the let-alone policy, but from a wise and highly artificial system of law. The great and original legislators of the day, proposed to themselves as a national object, the increase of British shipping. They saw that sailors and ships were the true army and omnipresent artillery of the British Islands. Their sagacity prefigured at once the safest and cheapest defence, and the most irresistible means of aggression and aggrandisement. They thought that the high seas might be able to compensate England for the narrow extent of her ploughed lands--might be made to yield wealth as great, sons as warlike and hardy, and power much greater. This sure instinct taught them that a great national object like this was not to be trusted to the natural course of events--to the chapter of accidents. They did not hesitate at once to realise their grand conceptions in direct and stringent legislation. They confined the w... Это и многое другое вы найдете в книге Sophisms of Free-Trade & Popular Political Economy Examined (Sir John Barnard Byles)