32 RELIGION, COLONISING AND TRADE 
that ever was made in England, and without which 
we had not now been owners of one half of the shipping 
or trade, nor employed one half the seamen that we do 
at present.’ 1 Plantations he approved, if they were 
in due subordination to and dependence on the 
Mother Country, but not otherwise ; and it was the 
dependence on the Mother Country involved in the 
navigation laws that commended them to him, as to 
other English merchants of his time, and not mez- 
chants only. At a little later date Davenant referred 
to Child by name and echoed his views. The bent and 
design of the navigation act, he wrote, was © to make 
those colonies as much dependent as possible upon 
their Mother Country,” and he laid down that ¢ colonies 
are a strength to their Mother Kingdom while they 
are under good discipline, while they are strictly made 
to observe the fundamental laws of their original 
country, and while they are kept dependent on it.” 2 
Trade and sea power, trade as nourishing sea power, 
and sea power as safeguarding and extending trade, 
that was the main outlook of Chatles II's reign. 
Plantations were smiled upon—only if they were 
dependencies and not colonies in the true sense. 
‘Trade is now become the lady, which in this 
present age is more courted and celebrated than in any 
former by all the princes and potentates of the world, 
and that deservedly too.” So wrote Roger Coke in 
1 P. 106. 
? Davenant, ## sup., pp. 85 and 207. Chatles Davenant, eldest son 
of Sir William ID’Avenant, the poet, lived 1656-1714. Adam Smith 
quoted him twice in the Wealth of Nations. In addition to Discourses 
on the Public Revenues and on the Trade of England, including Discourse ITI, 
On the Plantation Trade, published apparently in 1698, he wrote also 
An Essay on the East India Trade (1697).