42 XI. THE NAVIGATION ACT OF CHARLES II. CHAP. Whether the power of parliament was co-extensive with the English empire, but what territories the terms of 1660. the act included, they were interpreted to exclude "the dominions not of the crown of England." The tax was, also, never levied in the colonies; nor was it understood that the colonies were bound by a statute, unless they were expressly named.2 That distinctness was not wanting, when it was required by the interests of English merchants. The Navigation Act of the commonwealth had not been designed to trammel the commerce of the colonies; the convention parliament, the same body which betrayed the liberties of England, by restoring the Stuarts without conditions, now, by the most memorable statute in the English maritime code, connected in one act the protection of English shipping, and a monopoly to the English merchant of the trade with the colonies. In the reign of Richard II., the commerce of English ports had been secured to English shipping: the act of navigation of 1651 had done no more; and against it the colonists made no serious objection. The present act renewed the same provisions, and further avowed the design of sacrificing the natural rights of the colonists to English interests. "No merchandise shall be imported into the plantations but in English vessels, navigated by Englishmen, under penalty of forfeiture." The harbors of the colonies were shut against the Dutch, and every foreign vessel.-America, as the asylum of the oppressed, invited emigrants from the most varied climes. It was now enacted, that none but native or naturalized subjects should become a mer 1 Vaughan's Reports, 170. Compare Tyrwhit and Tyndale's Digest, xiii.-xv. Chalmers, p. 241, is not sustained in his inference. 2 Blackstone, 1. 107, 108; Chitty on Prerogative, 33. 3 12 Charles II. c. xvii. XI. chant or factor in any English settlement; excluding CHAP. the colonists from the benefits of a foreign competition. American industry produced articles for exportation; 1660. but these articles were of two kinds. Some were produced in quantities only in America, and would not compete in the English market with English productions. These were enumerated, and it was declared that none of them, that is, no sugar, tobacco, ginger, indigo, cotton, fustic, dyeing woods, shall be transported to any other country than those belonging to the crown of England, under penalty of forfeiture; and as new articles of industry of this class grew up in America, they were added to the list. But such other commodities as the English merchant might not find convenient to buy, the American planter might ship to foreign markets; the farther off the better;' because they would thus interfere less with the trades which were carried on in England. The colonists were, therefore, by a clause in the navigation act, confined to ports south of Cape Finisterre. 2 Hardly had time enough elapsed for a voyage or two across the Atlantic, before it was found that the English merchant might derive still further advantages at the cost of the colonists, by the imposition of still further restraints. A new law prohibited the importa- 1663 tion of European commodities into the colonies, except in English ships from England, to the end that England might be made the staple, not only of colonial productions, but of colonial supplies. Thus the colonists were compelled to buy in England, not only all English manufactures, but every thing else that they might need from any soil but their own. 1 Compare Adam Smith, b. iv. c. vii. p. iii. 2 15 Car. II. c. vii. 44 CHAP. XI. 2 COLONIAL MONOPOLY. The activity of the shipping of New England, which should only have excited admiration, excited envy in the minds of the English merchants. The produce of the plantations of the southern colonies was brought to New England, as a result of the little colonial exchanges. To the extravagant fears of mercantile avarice, New England was become a staple.1 Parlia1672. ment, therefore, resolved to exclude New England merchants from competing with the English, in the markets of the southern plantations; the liberty of free traffic between the colonies was accordingly taken away; and any of the enumerated commodities. exported from one colony to another, were subjected to a duty equivalent to the duty on the consumption of these commodities in England. By degrees, the avarice of English shopkeepers became bolder; and America was forbidden, by act of parliament, not merely to manufacture those articles which might compete with the English in foreign markets, but even to supply herself, by her own industry, with those articles which her position enabled her to manufacture with success for her own wants.3 Thus was the policy of Great Britain, with respect to her colonies, a system of monopoly, adopted after the example of Spain, and, for more than a century, inflexibly pursued, in no less than twenty-nine acts of parliament. The colonists were allowed to sell to foreigners only what England would not take; that so they might gain means to pay for the articles forced upon them by England. The commercial liberties of rising states were shackled by paper chains, and the 1 Chalmers, 262. See Hutch. Coll. 422. 2 25 Car. II. c. vii. 3 For example, 5 Geo. II. c. xxii. §7; and 23 Geo. II. c. xxix. XI. principles of natural justice subjected to the fears and CHAP. the covetousness of English shopkeepers.1 The effects of this system were baleful to the colonies. They could buy European and all foreign commodities only at the shops of the metropolis; and thus the merchant of the mother country could sell his goods for a little more than they were worth. England gained at the expense of America. The profit of the one was balanced by the loss of the other. In the sale of their products the colonists were equally injured. The English, being the sole purchasers, could obtain those products at a little less than their fair value. The merchant of Bristol or London was made richer; the planter of Virginia or Maryland was made poorer. No new value was created; one lost what the other gained; and both parties had equal claims to the benevolence of the legislature." Thus the colonists were wronged, both in their purchases and in their sales; the law "cut them with a double edge." The English consumer gained nothing; for the surplus colonial produce was reëxported to other nations. The English merchant, and not the English people, profited by the injustice. The English people were sufferers. Not that the undue employment of wealth in the colonial trade occasioned an injurious scarcity in other branches of industry; for the increased productiveness of capital soon yielded a larger supply than ever for all kinds of business; just as a fortune doubles rapidly at a high rate of interest. But the navigation act involved the foreign policy of England in contradictions; she was herself a monopolist of her own colonial trade, and yet steadily aimed 46 XI. THE MONOPOLY INJURIOUS TO ENGLAND. CHAP. at enfranchising the trade of the Spanish settlements Hence arose a set of relations which we shall find pregnant with consequences. In the domestic policy of England, the act increased the tendency to unequal legislation. The English merchant having become the sole factor for American colonies, and the manufacturer claiming to supply colonial wants, the English landholder consented to uphold the artificial system only by sharing in its emoluments; and corn-laws began to be enacted, in order to secure the profits of capital, applied to agriculture, against the dangers of foreign competition. Thus the system which impoverished the Virginia planter, by lowering the price of his tobacco crop, oppressed the English laborer, by raising the price of his bread; till at last a whig ministry could offer a bounty on the exportation of corn. 1 The law was still more injurious to England, from its influence on the connection between the colonies and the metropolis. Durable relations in society are correlative, and reciprocally beneficial. In this case, the statute was made by one party to bind the other, and was made on iniquitous principles. Established as the law of the strongest, it could endure no longer than the superiority in force. It converted commerce, which should be the bond of peace, into a source of rankling hostility, and scattered the certain seeds of a civil war. The navigation act contained a pledge of the ultimate independence of America. To the colonists, the navigation act was, at the time, an unmitigated evil; for the prohibition3 of plant 122 Car. II. c. xiii. 2 1 William and Mary. 3 12 Car. II. c. xxxiv. Comp. Chalmers, 243. |