Since the making of the statutes," the preamble ran, "other sovereign princes, finding themselves aggrieved by the said acts, as thinking that the same were made to the hurt and prejudice of their country and navy, have made like penal laws .. by reason whereof there hath not only grown great displeasure between the foreign princes and the kings of this realm, but also the merchants have been sore aggrieved and endamaged"; the growth of illicit traffic was also cited, and the law abolished prohibitions and made the ports of England open to foreign shipping on payment| of a higher duty on goods so imported. Various breaches in this policy, even during Elizabeth's reign, were made from time to time to suit certain ideas, such as discouraging the export of corn, or to please special interests such as the TURKEY COMPANY (q.v.).

In 1646, the old idea re-asserted itself; the Long Parliament enacted that no duty should be levied on goods intended for the plantations, provided they were shipped in English bottoms. In this act, Macpherson finds the foundation of the navigation acts, which he hails as the "commercial palladium of Great Britain" (vol. ii. p. 431). Five years later, parliament determined that no merchandise, either of Asia, Africa, or America, including our Own plantations, should be imported into England in any but English-built ships, belonging to English subjects, navigated by English commanders with three-fourths of the crew English. This is the first Navigation Act usually so styled. It was aimed against the Dutch, who were then on a free-trade basis, not only doing the carrying trade of Europe, but attracting English sailors into their service.

(5) The chief products of the English colonies to be shipped only to England,

Ireland, or other plantations.

There were other restrictions and conditions which do not need mention here. The Scottish parliament followed suit in 1661, but wisely, amongst other exemptions, made the act inapplicable to the case of corn in time of dearth. In 1663 (14 Car. II. c. 11) an important extension of the act became law, excluding from the privileges of English ships all foreign built ships, even if owned in England and manned as required by the act of 1660. This act also encouraged armament in Mediterranean vessels, chiefly because of the Barbary pirates.

For nearly two centuries the principle of these acts dominated the policy of England towards its shipping interests; it was interwoven in all acts whose chief object was the general restriction of trade to English channels, as in that of 1663, which required all commodities shipped from the plantations to pass through England to their destination. In 1675 it was found necessary to issue a proclamation to enforce the acts; in 1696, an attempt to re-enact them was made. All this shows that there was a good deal of evasion. On the other hand a sense of the weakness of the policy was shown in the partial relaxation of the acts in 1665 and 1693, in order to help English merchants to recover some share in the Greenland whale fishery. But public opinion was, on the whole, strongly in favour of the acts; hardly a voice except Richardson's (in 1750) was raised against their policy during the whole of the 18th century. The first organised attack upon them came from the colonies, and particularly the West Indian colonies, after the severance of the United States.

When the American colonies declared their independence, it seems to have been foreseen that their large trade with Great Britain, which had been fostered by artificial restrictions, would at once be lost if it were put on the footing of other foreign trade; accordingly American ships were, for the purposes of the direct trade, put on the footing of British ships. This amounted to a suspension of the navigation acts as regards this trade; and though at the time it attracted little attention, it was afterwards severely criticised as such. The order in council of 2nd July 1783, which conceded this favour, confined trade with the West Indian colonies to British ships, endeavouring to force it out of its natural channel, viz. with the republic of the United States to Canada and Nova Scotia. The West Indian colonies were not long in appealing against a restriction which, amongst other evils, made their supplies dearer and more precarious. On the 19th Nov. 1783, the legislature of Jamaica protested, and Barbados

and Antigua followed suit. The matter was referred to the Trade and Plantations' Committee in 1784, and again in 1791. They gathered information and evidence, and issued rather indeterminate reports, the gist of which was, in fact, that more harm was being done to America than to Great Britain. The matter dragged on from year to year, partly postponed by the frequent state of war, during which the navigation acts were continually suspended, as in 1803 and 1806. Very strenuous attacks were made by the shipowners upon these suspending acts, but no serious inroad was made on the principle of the navigation acts till Mr. HUSKISSON took the question up in 1821. He argued it very clearly and successfully. By an act of 1822 (3 Geo. IV. c. 44), the colonies were for the first time allowed to export their produce to any port, provided it were carried by British ships, and even in ships of the port for which it was destined, if that port was in one of the United States. By the same act a still more important step in advance was made; the old prohibition against the shipping of goods from the ports of certain European countries-notably the Netherlands and Germany - was at last abolished. In 1825 Mr. Huskisson carried a further reform, closely connected with his policy of reciprocal trade arrangements with other European countries; it was made legal to import the produce of any country in a ship of that country as well as in a British ship; the privilege which had been granted first to the United States, and then to Portugal, was made general, though with some sort of stipulation for reciprocal treatment.

The act of 1825 (6 Geo. IV. c. 109) practically brought the navigation act to that final form in which it was the subject of so much debate after the free-trade movement was established. The act was consolidated and re-enacted in 1833, and again in 1845 (8 & 9 Vict. c. 88). The latter was the last navigation act: it restricted the importation of certain enumerated articles to British ships or ships of the country in which these articles were produced; it prohibited the importation of the produce of Asia, Africa, and America, from any European port in any ship; it confined the trade between all parts of the British empire to British ships; and it required that a British ship should be navigated by a British master and a crew three-fourths of whom were British. The act should be read with those relating to the registration of ships and of seamen.

But every year the restraint became more irksome. The colonies and foreign countries were alike protesting, and volumes of bluebooks were filled with memorials. In 1847 the House of Commons appointed a select committee to consider the subject: five times

they simply reported the evidence which they had taken; the conflict of testimony was so great that they seemed unable to proceed to a report. In 1848 the House of Lords did exactly the same. But in 1849 the movement in favour of repeal could no longer be withstood by the act 12 & 13 Vict. c. 9, the old navigation acts and their policy were swept off the statute book as from the 1st of January 1850.

II. POLICY.

The beneficial results claimed for the navigation acts by their defenders were two, viz. :

a. That they secured England's naval supremacy by forcing her people to become sailors.

b. That they laid the foundation of England's commercial greatness.

Even ADAM SMITH, pointing out that they probably had their origin in national animosities, wrote of them-"They are as wise as if they had been dictated by the most deliberate wisdom."

(a) Naval Aspect.

In making that statement Adam Smith was evidently thinking chiefly of the naval aspect of the question. The opinion that these acts had been the origin of England's naval strength, prevailed to modern times, and was much in evidence before the parliamentary committees of 1848 and 1849. Even at the present day, many would be found to support it. But the better opinion would seem to be that which contests this view. Mr. Labouchere, speaking in the House of Commons in 1848, referred to the above-cited statement of Adam Smith's, as

one of the few errors which Adam Smith ever made." We might expect such authorities as MACGREGOR and PORTER in evidence before H. of C. committee, to be against the contentionbut many would pay greater attention to Captain Sir John Stirling's view that the navy had derived no benefits from the acts. It is difficult to produce actual evidence for or against the view in question. A few general considerations certainly shake confidence in it. To go no further back, in Elizabeth's reign, when there was little restraint on shipping, the navy of England proved itself vigorous and efficient, both in the Channel and off the Spanish main. The Dutch, despite the acts, were powerful at sea long after 1650. Soon after the enactment of the Navigation Act, the navy was at the lowest ebb in its history, and Coke, writing in 1671, thinks the act had actually weakened it. And allowing that there is another side to the argument, we may nevertheless cite the facts (1) that in 1740, and again in 1803, one of the most vital provisions of the act, as to the proportion of British seamen, was suspended during war time; and (2) that foreign seamen

were for years employed surreptitiously in the coasting trade of Great Britain in spite of the law to the contrary.

Since the repeal of the acts, there has been no apparent decrease in England's naval strength. Further, the best school for the navy is in the mercantile marine, and that which cramps the development of the latter must injuriously affect the navy. So that Adam Smith himself, when, passing from the passage already quoted, he states that the navigation acts were bad for commerce, appears to furnish a refutation of his own previous statement.

(b) Commercial Aspect.

This second passage from Adam Smith is as follows: "The navigation act is not favourable to foreign commerce, or to the growth of that opulence which can arise from it." If we could accept as representative the opinion of an ardent supporter of the act, the advocates of the act had no care that it should be favourable to commerce. "Trade," he writes, "was considered principally as the means for promoting the employment of ships, and was encouraged chiefly as it conduced to the one great national object, the naval strength of the country" (v. Collection of Papers, 1807, noted at end of article). Not that the loud complaints of the shipping interest, towards the end of the 18th century and onwards, show so much anxiety for the naval strength of the country as for their own private advancement. They would not, in fact, have agreed with Adam Smith. They alleged that the suspension of the acts was followed by decrease in shipping, and that they were at once handicapped in their competition with foreign shipowners. Some attempt was made to prove this by figures, but we have found it impossible to handle those figures as a simple indication of the separate effect of the navigation laws or their suspension. We can here only give some general statements.

Macpherson triumphantly quotes the Dutch remonstrance against the acts at Breda (1667) as an evidence of their value in wresting the trade from the Dutch; but we find nothing to show upon what lines the remonstrance proceeded, and it is at least as likely that it was directed against the general unfriendliness of the policy and the stringent powers of search given to British officers. It was to the gradual decline of the carrying trade of the Dutch that most of the advocates of the acts have pointed as evidence of their success; but they fail to consider the other reasons which led to the transfer of the sovereignty of the ocean. Thorold ROGERS (Econ. Inter. of History), free trader as he was, states that the naviga. tion acts of Cromwell transferred the supremacy of the seas from Holland to England.

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On the other hand, Macpherson admits that there were very soon loud complaints of the acts from British subjects. Roger COKE (q.v.) (1671) states that within two years the act had lost England the Baltic and Greenland trade; and two or three times it was specially waived with a view to the recovery of that trade. Sir Josiah CHILD, the great advocate of the acts, gives much evidence of their impotence and interference with trade. Richardson (1750) found great fault with the working of the acts. A glaring instance of their unfairness is that quoted by the assembly of Jamaica, that in 1783, when there was great distress in the island, there were about 5000 barrels of flour in the harbour which could not be landed because of the provisions of the navigation act. Labouchere cites as a gross instance of their bad effect, a despatch from the government of Trinidad to Earl Grey. "When coolie labour was first proposed to be introduced, American vessels could have been procured to bring them at £9 per head whereas the present charge is nearly £18." More general instances may be found in the evidence before the select committees of 1847 and 1848. And the short allusion to them in the first report of the Commissioners of Customs is a severe condemnation.

That their relaxation did not injure British shipping may be shown from Mr. Huskisson's figures comparing British and Foreign ships entering English ports.

against 17,387,079 foreign, or rather over 70 per cent, and at the present day the proportion remains much the same. As against these figures the only argument to be used is that the numerical increase of British tonnage would have been greater had the acts been maintained. This is contrary to the balance of evidence.

[Macpherson, Annals of Commerce, vols. i. ii. passim, see index, sub voce.-A collection of Papers on Navigation and Trade (including reports of Committee of Trade and Plantations) printed by order of the Society of Shipowners, 1807. Huskisson's Speeches, 1825-1827.John Lewis Ricardo's Anatomy of the Navigation Laws, 1847.-Cp. Ricardo's Anatomy dissected. By a Barrister (1848). — Reports of Committee of House of Commons on the Navigation Laws, 1847. Reports of Committee of House of Lords, 1848.-Mr. Labouchere's Speech in the House of Commons, 1848.-Debates of 1849, e.g. Harrowby and Brougham, 7th May, for the Acts; also Earl Grey.-Pamphlets of W. S. Lindsay and T. Ogilvy. — Allen's Navigation Laws of Great Britain, 1849.– M'Culloch's note to Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, 1863 (cp. M'Culloch's Commercial Dictionary).]

C. A. H.

NAVILLE, FRANÇOIS MARC LOUIS (17841846), was born at Geneva and died at Vernier near that city. He was a Protestant pastor of French extraction; persecution having driven his family from their native land. Like many pastors he occupied himself with education.

In 1829 the French Academy offered a prize on the subject of Charity-two competitors were bracketed equal for it-DUCHATEL and Naville.

Naville's paper, revised and enlarged, was printed under the title De la charité légale, de ses effets, de ses causes et spécialement des maisons de travail et de la proscription de la mendicité in 1836, 2 vols. 8vo. The success of this work is due to its methodical arrangement and the clearness of its conclusions. It argues against charity dispensed by the state, in favour of private bounty.

The sincerity of the author is shown in his declaration that when commencing to write he was quite of the opposite opinion, and regarded charity as one of the normal and necessary functions of the state. In working on his subject he felt the instability of the basis of his opinions, and argued against state interference. Within the limits of the subject the work is a masterpiece. A. C. f.

NEALE, EDWARD VANSITTART (1810-1892), Vansittart Neale's active connection with co-operation did not begin till he was forty years of age, though he was ripe for the work by a previous searching study of systems of socialism.

About 1850 he heard of and joined the wellknown band of Christian Socialists (see CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM), and became a member of the "Society for Promoting Working Men's Associations" of which the Rev. F. D. MAURICE was then president.

His work for the co-operative cause during forty years was rather of a practical than of a literary character. Yet his literary work was considerable, and included a Manual for Cooperators and many magazine articles on social economics, the last, Thoughts on Social Problems and their Solution, appearing in the Economic Review, October 1892, after his death. He was also a constant contributor to the Co-operative News, and numerous pamphlets issued by the Co-operative Union were written by him. His practical work may be classified as follows:

He

1. Promotion of Co-operative Societies. started the first co-operative stores in London, and the "Central Co-operative Agency," which anticipated, if it did not actually bring about, the present Co-operative Wholesale Society. He took an active part in the formation and management of many societies, distributive and productive, and helped them largely with funds. Amongst other attempts he, with his own capital, tried a large experiment in co-operative production at the Atlas Engineering Works. Though he thus lost a considerable fortune, the sacrifices made by Neale in the cause did perhaps more than anything to keep out class jealousy and distrust from the co-operative movement.

2. Legal Work, and especially the promotion of legislation to protect industrial societies. It was chiefly through the efforts of Neale and J. M. Ludlow that the first Industrial and Provident Societies Act was passed in 1852, which gave a legal status to co-operative societies -regarded hopefully by some as the "Magna Charta" of the labouring classes. He shared in the drafting of many amending acts, and was solely responsible for the great consolidating act of 1876. He also gave valuable assistance in framing rules for co-operative societies, notably those of the Co-operative Wholesale Society and the Co-operative Union, and he prepared the model rules under which most societies are now governed.

3. Work in connection with the Co-operative Union. With the rapid growth of the Cooperative Wholesale Society's business, it was felt that something other than a successful business concern was required as the "official and recognised representative organ of co-operation in England."

Congresses presided over by Vansittart Neale were accordingly held in London in 1868. They were the forerunners of the co-operative congresses, which are now of annual occurrence, and led to the formation of the Co-operative Union. In all this Neale took a very prominent part, and in 1874 he became secretary of the Union, living in lodgings in Manchester and devoting himself absolutely to the work. He retained this post until within a few months of his death, notwithstanding his advanced age, and his succession to a landed estate, which

would have drawn away most men from such arduous work.

In this position he was at the centre of the 30-operative movement in England; he also attended congresses and corresponded with cooperators abroad. He helped to found, in 1884, the Labour Association for advancement of co-operative production and labour partnerships -which still exists.

It is perhaps needless to add that in the great question that threatens a division among co-operators, Neale held that the workpeople employed by co-operative distributive societies, wholesale or retail, were entitled to a share in the profits, and a voice in the direction, instead of being treated like the employés in any ordinary factory or workshop.

E. V. Neale wrote several religious works; among those on co-operative questions are:— Association and Education: What they may do for the People.-Land, Labour, and Machinery.The Economic Aspect of Co-operation.—The Three C's Co-operative Triologue.-May I do what I will with mine own? 1851.-The Economics of Co-operation.

[Henry Pitman, Life, Co-operative Union, Manchester, 1894.-Notice by J. M. Ludlow, Economic Journal, vol. ii. 1892; and notices by Judge Hughes, Economic Review, 1893 (see also CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM; CO-OPERATION).]

H. HỌ.

NEBENIUS, KARL FRIEDRICH (1784-1857), was born near Landau in the Rhenish Palatinate. After studying law at Tübingen, he made himself acquainted with the Napoleonic methods of administration as a volunteer assistant to the prefect at Besançon, but would not accept a place in the French service. He became in 1807 private secretary in the Baden ministry of finance, in 1823 first councillor, and in 1838 president of the ministry of the interior. He supported a liberal policy, but the absolutist party under Blittersdorf gained the ascendancy, and he resigned office in 1839. He declined an offer from Frederick William IV. of a high position in the Prussian service. On the fall of Blittersdorf he became again in 1845 minister president. He retired in July 1849; suffered for some years from failing sight, and died at Karlsruhe.

Nebenius was the leader of reform in Baden for nearly forty years, constructing the new constitution of the state in 1818, creating its railways, remodelling its taxation and domain-management, introducing the metrical system of weights and measures, organising the system of popular instruction, and regenerating the higher teaching, especially in the university of Heidelberg, of

which he was curator. But his name is chiefly

associated with his energetic and successful efforts for the establishment of the ZOLLVEREIN-an event which ROSCHER pronounced to have been the most important in German history between Waterloo and Königgratz. LIST had done much, as a popular writer and indefatigable agitator, to recom

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mend to the national mind the idea of such an institution; but Nebenius studied its conditions, conciliated its opponents, and devised a tariff for the general adoption of its component states, so that he has been justly called its intellectual founder. The perseverance, foresight, and tact with which he worked out the problem, merit hearty approbation.

As a scientific economist he was of the school of Adam SMITH, and was an advocate of FREE TRADE as the general rule in practice; but he rejected the doctrine of the absolute non-intervention of the state in the industrial world. His principal theoretical work was Der öffentliche Kredit, 1820, 2nd ed., 1829, "perhaps," says Roscher, "the best monograph in the whole economic literature of Germany, and certainly the most important treatise on the subject of public debts which has been written in any language.' His most noteworthy writings bearing on the question of the Zollverein were his Denkschrift über das Deutsche Zollwesen, written and privately circulated in 1819, but not published till 1833, and Der Deutsche Zollverein, sein System und seine Zukunft, 1835. [Von Weech in Allg. Deutsche Biogr.-Lippert in Handw. der Staatswissenschaften.-Roscher, Gesch. der N.O., p. 953.]

not.

J. K. I.

NECESSARII HEREDES. Members of the household of a deceased person, upon whom his inheritance fell, succeeded to him as universal successors or heirs without any consent of their own, and whether they wished to succeed or Hence they are called in Roman law necessary heirs necessarii heredes, being opposed to heirs, who are not members of the household of the deceased, as these do not acquire his inheritance without an act of acceptance on their part, hereditatis aditio.

There are two classes of necessarii heredes: 1. sui et necessarii, descendants of the deceased under his paternal power, who become by his death independent persons, sui juris; 2. necessarii heredes, i. e. slaves of the deceased made heirs by him in his will.

E. A. W.

NECKER, JACQUES (1732-1804), was born and died at Geneva. His character was an unusual mixture of qualities rarely united in one individual. A very able and honest banker, he established a house of the highest standing at Paris-Thélusson, Necker & Co., -and rapidly accumulated a large fortune; satisfied with the wealth he had acquired, he retired from business at the age of forty to devote himself to politics and literature. He believed himself possessed of sufficient capacity to lead the political world, and that at a moment when it was in the utmost disorder. Dexterous in the use of expedients, and but slightly burdened with theory, he flattered himself that he would eclipse TURGOT, whose inferior he was, especially in grasp of principle. His first work, the Éloge de Colbert, received a prize from the French Academy in 1773, he then wrote De la législation et du commerce des grains, 8vo, 1775, which, dogmatic in style and opposed to the views of