EARLY COUNCILS OF TRADE 269 Trade, in abeyance after 1665 because of the distracted condition of the kingdom, was abolished in 1668 and a new council appointed. This council in turn, after an inactive existence of four years, was abolished in 1672 and its functions were transferred to the select Council for Foreign Plantations, which had been revived, 3 August 1670, under the influence of Lord Ashley (later the Earl of Shaftesbury), and which, as the Select Council for Trade and Foreign Plantations, sat from 13 October 1672 to 22 December 1674. After the fall of Shaftesbury, this council also was abolished, owing probably in large part to the inability of the Government to meet the expense; and its duties were transferred to the committee of the Privy Council, which under a special commission of February 1675 performed, but in a more authoritative manner, essentially the same work as that of the earlier councils. This important committee, the Lords of Trade, was composed as a rule of men high in rank, office, and influence, and though it underwent frequent changes in personnel, notably after the Revolution of 1689, it sat for twenty-five years. Finally, under the pressure of influential mercantile leaders, who were dissatisfied with existing trade conditions and with the indifference and carelessness of an inexpert and amateur body such as the Lords of Trade were showing themselves to be, Parliament determined to re-establish the old system of select councils. In a vigorous resolution, which reproduced substantially the instructions of 1672, it laid down the terms under which such a council should carry on its work. But King William, always jealous of his royal rights and deeming the action of the House of Commons an encroachment on the powers of the prerogative, took the matter out of the hands of Parliament and on 15 May 1696, by warrant under the sign manual, brought into being the Lords Commissioners for Trade and Plantations, commonly known as the Board of Trade. The series of instructions issued from 1660 to 1696, considered as a whole and with regard to their development, constitute a commercial and colonial programme that determined for more than a century the policy of the executive towards trade and the colonies. Shaped by the London merchants in its earliest form and elaborated by Shaftesbury and Locke later, this programme underwent very little change during the whole period of its enforcement. Its fundamental purposes were the supervision and regulation of domestic and foreign trade, the encouragement of home manufactures, and the advancement of fishing and shipping. The control of the Plantations constituted an integral but subservient part of this programme. Viewed as a source of such raw materials and tropical products as England needed, the Plantations became a matter of commercial rather than colonial concern, and the various councils were enjoined to discover, then and always, how best these colonies could be made useful and beneficial to the mother country. To this end the councils were directed to inform themselves of the condition of the colonies, their administration, complaints, and needs; to provide newly appointed governors with instructions; to enquire into the course of justice; to ascertain what laws were passed and to scrutinise their "constitutionality". Furthermore, they had to determine how best to advance the welfare, defence, and security of the Plantations; to inform themselves regarding the inhabitants-planters, servants, and slaves, and to aid in their increase and proper distribution; to promote the moral and spiritual status of servants, slaves, and Indians; to prevent crimping and spiriting, and to devise means for improving and increasing colonial commodities. Also they were to regulate colonial trade in such a way as to render each colony serviceable to the others and all serviceable to England; to watch over the execution of whatever Acts Parliament passed for the benefit of commerce; to procure maps, charts, and descriptions of routes and channels; to enquire into rates and duties, the systems of other countries, and their methods of managing their colonies; to ascertain what colonial staples were deserving of encouragement, what trades there were that were likely to be injurious to England, and, if any such should be found, to make every effort to turn colonial activities into the proper channels. But the councils were invested with no executive functions, and had no power to dispose of any public money. Their duties were inquisitorial and advisory; throughout their entire history they made no attempt to formulate or recommend any fundamental principles of colonial policy, other than those laid down in their instructions, and at no time did they show any serious interest in adapting their ideas regarding colonial administration to the changing conditions of colonial life. Herein lay the weakness of the old British system. While Charles II and his successors were appointing councils and drafting instructions, Parliament was determining the rules that were to govern the trade and navigation of the kingdom. The principles underlying these rules were not new, for in one form or another, chiefly by executive order, they had been in application since the beginning of settlement; but they were new as a subject for effective parliamentary legislation, because the Commonwealth Navigation Act of 1651 had ceased to have validity after the restoration of the monarchy. Those who now felt the necessity of supplanting the Order in Council by an Act of Parliament had a threefold object in view. Because of the futility of the Act of 1651, which had failed to wrest the carrying trade from the Dutch, they wished, first of all, to restate more emphatically than before the essential features of that Act, and thereby to ensure the promotion of English shipping and seamanship and to secure for England complete control of her own carrying trade. In the second place, they wished to utilise the colonies as a source of such commodities as England needed for her own consumption and so to rectify, if possible, an unfavourable balance of trade with certain THE NAVIGATION ACT OF 1660 271 parts of Europe and the East. In the third place, they wished to protect British mercantile interests and to increase the customs revenues by making England the staple through which all manufactured goods that were taken to the Plantations would have to pass. These objects were attained in two important measures, one passed by the Convention Parliament in 1660 and the other by the Cavalier Parliament in 1663. Certain supplemental measures of 1662, 1671, and 1673 added explanations and filled in gaps, but in no way altered the main features. Behind these Acts were merchants and promoters without official position, such as Martin Noell, James Drax, Maurice Thompson, and Thomas Povey; office holders, such as Joseph Williamson, Richard Nicolls, John Werden, Robert Southwell, and George Downing, perhaps the most persistent and influential of them all, and statesmen of the first rank and members of the royal family, such as Clarendon, Arlington, Berkeley, Anthony Ashley Cooper, Prince Rupert, and the Duke of York. Clarendon, who had great weight with the King, was constantly urging upon him the importance of shipping, the fisheries, and the Plantations as a means of increasing the revenues, and calling to his attention the "infinite importance of the improvement of trade". Royalists and Parliamentarians alike upheld the principles upon which the Navigation Acts were founded and party lines had little place in the support of these measures. According to the Act of 1660, the first seventeen clauses of which were but a confirmation and elaboration of the Act of 1651, no goods or commodities were to be carried to or from the Plantations except in ships owned by people of England, Ireland, Wales or Berwick-onTweed, or were built in and belonged to the Plantations. Of these ships the masters and three-fourths of the sailors must be "English". "English" was defined in 1662 as meaning "only his Majesty's subjects of England, Ireland, and the Plantations", thus excluding the inhabitants of the Channel Islands, the Isle of Man, and apparently Scotland. In the case of the first two an exception was made as regards their shipping, which was construed as "English built",1 and by common law interpretation, at that time deemed more binding than a dictum of Parliament, Scotsmen were accounted Englishmen within the meaning of the Act, on the ground that since 1603 they had been "His Majesty's subjects", because born within the King's allegiance. Jews born abroad were excluded, as were all aliens and foreigners unless they had been naturalised or made full denizens. The requirement that three-fourths of the sailors be "English" was more precise than the "for the most part" of the Act of 1651, and by just so much the more was it impossible of enforcement, particularly as the further rule was laid down that the proportion be maintained for the whole voyage. Later the practice became common of filling 1 Act of 1662, § vii; House of Lords MSS, N.S. 11, 484 (Hist. MSS. Commiss.). 2 Cf. Cal. St. Pap. Col. 1661-8, no. 140. up vacancies, due to desertion or other causes, by taking on foreigners, notably in the Mediterranean, partly because Englishmen could not be obtained and partly because foreigners generally served for lower wages. In times of war, as in 1709, 1740, and 1756, the proportion was lowered to one-half and even one-quarter, and it was further enacted that foreigners serving for four years on English ships would be considered natural-born subjects of England.1 According to the Act of 1660 (§ vii) English-built ships were construed as those of England, Ireland, the islands of Jersey and Guernsey, and the Plantations. The question naturally arose as to whether foreign-built ships could be utilised and, at first, was answered in the affirmative (§§ x, xi), in case the owner took oath that such vessel had actually been bought by him and was duly certificated and registered. But this privilege was soon withdrawn by an explanatory Act of 1662, according to which no foreign-built ship could engage in the Plantation trade after December of that year. This Act was itself explained by several subsequent Acts, and in a number of cases foreign-built ships were made "free" by Orders in Council. In 1716 a bill was proposed by the Treasury to prevent foreign-built ships from entering the general registry by way of Scotland, unless such vessel had been Scottish property at the time of ratifying the treaty of Union and registered accordingly, but this bill was never introduced into Parliament. Difficulties were always likely to arise regarding English-built ships rebuilt in a foreign country, for if such a vessel had left in it but a single original plank, it was deemed the same ship in law. After 1747 only prize ships, legally condemned, were rated as English-built.5 At least one ardent mercantilist raised the question whether "English-built" did not mean that the vessel had to be constructed of English timber, but the scarcity and dearness of English timber made importation unavoidable, though, throughout the eighteenth century, Plantation material was sought for and obtained whenever possible. Simple as seemed to be the rule concerning the carrying trade, it involved some difficulties in practice. Protests were entered by inhabitants of the island of Jersey at the restriction of their opportunities, and efforts were made to obtain relief. But the Privy Council would admit of no relaxation of the law, and consequently the Channel Islands became the scene of a good deal of smuggling in defiance of the Navigation Acts as well as of the Acts relating to the trade with France. There was nothing in the Acts preventing colonial vessels from carrying foreign commodities directly to Europe, as, for example, 2 1 6 Anne, c. 37, § xx; 13 George II, c. 3; 28 George II, c. 16. 13-14 Charles II, c. 11, § vi. 3 Acts of the Privy Council, Colonial, 1, no. 1272. 4 P.R.O., Colonial Office, 388/15, M. 179. 5 20 George II, c. 45, § ix. 6 Petyt, Britannia Languens, p. 52. 7A.P.C., Colonial, 1, nos. 926, 932, 957, 1068, 1072, 1182; Cal. St. Pap. Col. 1675-8, no. 840. ENUMERATED COMMODITIES 273 French sugar to Holland, and nothing barring East India ships from trading directly with the Plantations, until they were forbidden to do so by an Order in Council, 2 October 1721, instructing the colonial governors not to permit it.1 About the same time the question was raised as to whether Spanish ships, coming from Spanish ports in America and laden with the products of those countries, might not sell their cargoes at a British Plantation and load again with British produce, but the answer was in the negative. Again, the question as to whether negroes were "commodities" in the sense of the Acts was eventually decided in the affirmative. Thus far the Act of 1660 varied but slightly from that of 1651 and did little more than re-enact a law that had been rendered void by the Stuart restoration. But at this point appears a regulation3 not to be found in the Commonwealth Act, though frequently enforced by Orders in Council before 1640 and at least implied in the instructions to the Council of Trade of 1650, to the effect that as the colonies were the natural sources for the raw materials needed in home industries, colonial commodities of this character should be entirely monopolised by the mother country. Accordingly, certain unworked staples of the Plantations-sugar, tobacco, cotton-wool, indigo, ginger, and such dye-woods as fustick, logwood, and brazilletto were "enumerated", that is, could be brought only to England, Ireland, Wales, and Berwick-on-Tweed. This clause was not introduced until the third reading of the bill and has been attributed to Sir George Downing. But there was nothing new in the principle involved, though neither the Council of State, the Committee of Trade under the Commonwealth, nor the Committee of Trade under the Protectorate ever attempted to apply it even in a restricted sense. The clause did not enumerate all colonial commodities, but only certain ones which were needed in the household, the pharmacopoeia, and the textile industries, or, as in the case of tobacco, which helped to swell the customs revenue, and as it omitted to put on the list fish, grain, and lumber, all of them important staples of the continental American colonies, it affected New England and the middle colonies scarcely at all. As time went on this list of enumerated commodities was very considerably extended, partly for the sake of the industries in England that were benefited thereby and partly for the sake of the customs revenue. First, cocoanuts, though at this time not strictly speaking enumerated, were construed as coming within the meaning of the clause. Then Captain Michael Cole, a trader and master of a vessel doing business with South Carolina, stirred up the Lord High Treasurer and the Commissioners of the Customs to obtain the 1 Journal of Commissioners for Trade and Plantations, 1718-22, p. 200. 2 Ibid. pp. 138-9. 3 § xviii. 'Any of the [enumerated] commodities or cacao." Maryland Archives, xx, 264, 352. CHBE I 18 |