Alpha Book

Even
Ireland, which was practically a colony, was accorded in 1782 the right
to make its own local laws, a measure of self-government enjoyed till 1
January, 1801. [Footnote: See below, p. 431.]
[Sidenote: Decline and Gradual Abandonment of Mercantilism]
British commercial policy, too, underwent a change, for the Navigation
Acts, which had angered the American colonies, could not now be applied
to the free nation of the United States. Moreover, the mercantilist
theory, having in this case produced such unfortunate results,
henceforth began to lose ground, and it is not without interest that
Adam Smith's _Wealth of Nations_, the classic expression of the
new political economy of free trade,--of _laisser-faire_, as the
French styled it,--which was destined to supplant mercantilism, was
published in 1776, the very year of the declaration of American
independence. Of course Great Britain's mercantilist trade regulations
were not at once abandoned, but they had received a death-blow, and
British commerce seemed none the worse for it.


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