SETTLEMENTS ON THE DEMERARY, &C. 23 



to Henry the Eighth. As soon as the colonies, or plantations, 

 began to thrive, a marine grew up ; which, in the Dutch war 

 of Cromwell, and in that at the beginning of th«i reign of 

 Charles the Second (both before the navigation-act), was equal 

 or superior to the united navies of France and Holland. Our 

 naval strengsh lias grown with ©ur colonial intercourse, not 

 by means of, but in spite of the act of navigation. It was 

 found absolutely necessary to break m upon this act in the 

 25th of Geo. HI. by what was callcl the Dutch Property Act; 

 without which Britain cauld not have profited from the migra- 

 tion of Dutch capital,, rendered natural by the French con^- 

 quest of Holland., A further inroad of a more equivocal 

 kind was made the year following, by conferring a dispensing 

 power on the privy-council ; a measure the resource of lazi- 

 ness, which cared not to discuss, and dared not to abandon 

 decidedly, the old system." 



