The New Scots Magazine Volume 2 (Paperback)

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. 1830 edition. Excerpt: ...eulogised so highly, and the spirit and intent of which Mr Pitt supported and extended with all his influence, however its letter was modified. Even Adam Smith, who wrote at a period when England had hardly ceased to be an exporter of the necessaries of life, and when consequently free trade was not the proposition it now is, but the very reverse--even Adam Smith asserted the Navigation Act to be dictated by " the most deliberate wisdom." That act formed an essential part of the naval constitution of England, if I may so speak; it was on the faith of that sacred engagement, for sacred it had become in the sight of successive generations of Englishmen, that you, gentlemen, embarked your property, which is now much of it sacrificed and lost by as direct an act of spoliation as if the same power had seized a portion of your estates, which you hold only under the same sanction--that of the law. But, gentlemen, it is not your interests alone which have been sacrificed--No; in those the royal navy of England has been touched; at the very mention of which, he is no Briton whose heart does not glow with feelings of exultation, mingled, however, at present, I fear, with those of apprehension and regret. That navy, which is the shield of England's defence, and the arm of her strength, which has preserved her in the profoundest peace, when a world was leagued against her, which swept the ocean of her enemies, and poured upon their remotest shores her irresistable thunders--that force without which her military arm would be utterly powerless, excepting when raised against her own country, and which has, therefore, a share in all the laurels Britain wears, as well as those bright and unfading ones which are exclusively her own--the royal navy is put in...