[83] Opinions, p. 89.
[84] Macpherson, vol. iii. p. 506.
[85] Ibid., vol. iv. p. 158.
[86] Bryan Edwards, himself a planter of the time, says (vol. ii. p. 522) that staves and lumber had risen 37 per cent in the British islands, which he attributes to the extortions of the navigation monopoly, "under the present limited intercourse with America." Coxe (View, etc., p. 134) gives lists of comparative prices, in 1790, June to November, in the neighboring islands of Santo Domingo and Jamaica, which show forcibly the burdens under which the latter labored.
[87] Chalmers, in one of his works quoted by Macpherson (vol. iii. p. 559), estimates the annual entries of American-built ships to British ports, 1771-74, to be 34,587 tons. From this figure the falling off was marked.
[88] Report of the Committee of the Privy Council, Jan. 28, 1791, p. 39.
[89] This awkward expression means that the amount of decrease was rather less than half the before-the-war total.
[90] June 18, 1784, substantially the re-issue of that of Dec. 26, 1783, which Reeves (p. 288) considers the standard exemplar.
[91] Reeves, p. 431.
[92] American State Papers, Commerce and Navigation, vol. x. p. 389.