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 But this privilege was soon withdrawn by an explanatory Act of 1662, according to which no foreign-built ship could engage in the Plantation trade after December of that year.2 This Act was itself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, 1 6 Anne, c. 37, § xx; 13 George II, c. 3; 20s of the Privy Council, Colonial, 1, no. 1272. 13-14 Charles II, c. 11, § vi.

2

5

P.R.O., Colonial Office, 388/15, M. 179.

20 George II, c. 45, § ix.

28 George II, c. 16.

• Petyt, Britannia Languens, p. 52.

'A.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.2 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.

4"Any of the [enumerated] commodities or cacao." Maryland Archives, XX, 264, 352.

CHBE I

18

inclusion of rice in the clause of a bill of 1705 which enumerated molasses, maintaining that the carrying of such a commodity directly to the European continent was "to the great prejudice of the trade of the kingdom and the lessening of the correspondence and relation between this kingdom and the plantations". But so manifestly disadvantageous was this enumeration of rice and so many were the protests raised against it, that at least as early as 1721 and finally in 1731 and 1735 the restriction was in part removed and both South Carolina and Georgia were allowed to export rice directly to points south of Cape Finisterre. This privilege was further extended in 1764 and 1765 to include other colonies and a wider southern area. Naval stores, copper, beaver and all other furs followed rice and molasses, thereby adding staples that affected the northern as well as the southern colonies. Beaver was enumerated to keep it out of the hands of the French, with whom Great Britain was in continuous conflict over the monopoly of fish and furs. After 1764 the list was further extended by the addition of coffee, pimento, cocoanuts, whale fins, raw silk, hides and skins, pot and pearl ashes, iron, and lumber from America, and gum senega from Senegambia, a royal colony for twenty years after 1763.1 In 1766 and 1767, when England was endeavouring to tighten up her whole colonial system, the rule was laid down that even if a commodity were not enumerated it had to be sent to England or to some country south of Cape Finisterre, thus making complete the monopoly of the colonial market, as far as northern Europe was concerned. This was what many mercantilists had wanted from the beginning, for it prohibited all direct trade in colonial products north of Spain. Mercantilism in its relation to the colonies had now reached its peak.

The Act of 1660 covered two of the three main objects of the Navigation Acts-shipping and the enumeration. The third-the staple was dealt with in 1663. The measure then passed was known as "An Act for the Encouragement of Trade", and in two of its clauses provided that all commodities of the growth, production, and manufacture of Europe, destined for the Plantations, should first be carried to England, Wales, or Berwick-on-Tweed in lawful shipping, lawfully manned, and there put on shore before being carried to America. This meant that with a few exceptions all the foreign import trade of the Plantations had to pass through England as a staple, and that foreign or manufactured goods had to be unladen in one or other of her ports and there reladen as if they were English commodities. The same drawbacks were allowed (except in the case of foreign ironware and cordage) on all continental goods re-exported from England to Newfoundland and the Plantations that were allowed under the same circumstances to foreign countries.2 The exceptions 1 5 George III, c. 37; Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations (The World's Classics edition), II, 273. 2 Board of Trade Journal, 1714-8, p. 119.

THE STAPLE ACT OF 1663

275 admitted by the law were three. First, salt for the fisheries of New England, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland, much of which came from the Isle of May (Maio) of the Cape Verde group belonging to Portugal, the sole right of exportation having been granted to England by Portugal in the marriage treaty of 1661. Secondly, servants, horses, and provisions from Scotland and Ireland, and, later, linen from the latter country. The exception ceased to apply to Scotland after 1707,1 and in the case of Ireland led to some ingenious attempts at evasion, as when shippers listed candles and soap as "provisions and when called to book offered to prove their point by eating them.2 Thirdly, wines from Madeira and the Azores, a traffic that attained considerable dimensions in the northern colonies, in which wheat, flour, and pipe staves were exchanged for wine. In this connection the question arose as to whether or not wines from the Canary Islands were similarly excepted. The matter was first brought up in 1686; then in 1702 Randolph called attention to it and asked for a ruling.3 As might have been expected, the customs officials and the Board of Trade replied in the negative, but the legal authorities had their doubts, for they thought that the Canaries were more African than were either Madeira or the Azores and so ought to be equally privileged. A decision in a New York vice-admiralty court in 1704 was adverse, and it was generally conceded in the colonies that Canary wines could not be imported directly. Hence much smuggling took place. 5

The idea of the staple was old, but its application to the colonies, with the whole realm of England as the staple, was new. The objects of the Act were to maintain "a greater correspondence between [the Plantations, peopled by the king's subjects] and this kingdom of England", to keep them "in a firmer dependence upon it", to render them "more beneficial and advantageous unto it in the further employment and increase of English shipping, vent of English woollen and other manufactures and commodities", to render "the navigation from the same more safe and cheap", to make "the kingdom a staple, not only of the commodities of those Plantations but also of the commodities of other countries and places, for the shipping of them"; and to follow "the usage of other nations" of keeping "their plantation trade to themselves". The colonies were increasing in number and importance; old settlements were being strengthened and new settlements proposed. Plans for the seizure of New Amsterdam were under consideration, and a general advance for the benefit of trade

1 Cal. St. Pap. Col. 1661-8, p. 526.

2 Some Thoughts humbly offered toward a Union between Great Britain and Ireland (1708), p. 19; Cal. St. Pap. Col. 1677-80, no. 1304.

3 P.R.O., C.O. 388/8, E. 9, p. 13.

Ibid. 389/28, pp. 43-5. Representation of 15 August 1721.

5 Historical MSS Comm., Polwarth MSS, II, 14.

6 Repeated in 22-23 Charles II, c. 26, §§ x, xi.

and colonisation was already in the minds of the Duke of York and those in his confidence, who were projecting the founding of new colonies-the Jerseys, the Carolinas, and the Bahamas. To Englishmen colonies were becoming a part of the fixed scheme of things and the proper principles according to which their relationship with the mother country was to be determined were already undergoing definition. A new era was opening, and the dependence, even subserviency, of the colonies upon England had to be made clear at the outset. To allow the colonists to buy elsewhere their woollens and the finished products of countries other than England and to carry them from the place of purchase directly to their own ports, passing by the merchants and manufacturers of the mother country and taking advantage of the lower French and Dutch prices, to their own advantage and the injury of English trade-such a policy was inconceivable. It was necessary to consider not only the loss of the customs revenue, the injury to the balance of trade, and the political disadvantages that might accrue, but also the possible frustration of the efforts the Government was making to recover from the bankruptcy of the Puritan administration and to place the kingdom once more on a sound financial basis. Trade was becoming essential to the attainment of solvency, and this fact was never more evident than during the first years of the Restoration when the Navigation Acts were passed. Immediate steps were taken to put the Acts into execution. Letters were written to the governors of all the colonies ordering them to see that all foreign trade with the Plantations be strictly prohibited, and reminding them that any neglect or connivance on their part would be followed by heavy penalties. The Act of 1660 required of them, at the risk of being discharged from their employment if they failed, a solemn oath binding them to do their utmost that the Act "be punctually and bona fide observed", an obligation that was repeated and reinforced by the Order in Council of June 1663.1 The governors were also to keep accounts of all vessels trading to their particular colonies and twice a year to send to England the names of both ships and masters. They were to transmit copies of all bonds, such as the Act required all masters to furnish at the port of clearance to the effect that they would carry their cargoes to England or to some other Plantation. They were to scrutinise all foreign-built ships coming to the colony to see whether or not such ships were trading legally, had the proper certificates, and had given the proper bond. The Act of 1663 required all masters to furnish the governors with complete information regarding their ships and cargoes, and placed the governors themselves under the additional obligation of taking oath in England before departure and of giving security at the Exchequer or elsewhere. According to later rulings all governors appointed by proprietors were to have their bonds approved by the Attorney1 New York Colonial Documents, III, 45-6.