that vital question of the relation between population, commerce, and power which no Free Trade writer since Adam Smith has fairly faced.
Adam Smith himself, as we have already shown, had a strong national spirit, an invigorating sanity, and a scorn of pedantries which helped him to get over the difficulty. Where he clearly saw that his theories would clash with Imperial interests he held, without hesitation, that economic methods should subserve political ends. Universal Free Trade, remaining now as remote from realization as when the 'Wealth of Nations' was published, he rightly believed to be Utopian, like the dream of a universal religion or a universal language. A few years after the appearance of his masterpiece, England, following the loss of her American Colonies, was attacked by the greatest naval coalition ever formed. She fought in that crisis not only for the remains of her Empire, but for life; and Rodney's victory on April 12, 1782, saved her from destruction and made Trafalgar possible. In the sphere where the facts before his eyes convinced him that political interests demanded maritime protection, the father of Free Trade declared, without hesitation, that economic dogma must go to the wall. The Dutch had lost their naval supremacy, but they still kept the lead in the carrying trade outside the pale of our Navigation Laws. The cause of immediate cheapness—a quite different cause from that of continuous economic progress—would have been solved by declaring Free Trade in shipping and allowing British tonnage to be partially displaced by Dutch. That would have been, for the moment, a sound stroke of pure economy, but it would have been fatal in politics, and in the long run fatal in economics also. Here was a case where displacement from one particular trade could have been followed by no economic compensation whatever. That mercantile ascendancy should remain in our hands was, as it still is, the condition of our existence. The Navigation Laws secured the power of the nation, and no naval officer was stricter than Nelson in enforcing them; they were the nerves
