44. Navigation Acts.
Early attempts to protect English shipping.
All manner of trade, however, was more or less hampered by the Parliamentary Acts of Navigation and Trade. In the time of Richard II. (1377-1399) it had been enacted that "None of the king's liege people should ship any merchandise out of or into the realm, except in the ships of the king's ligeance, on pain of forfeiture." Under Henry VII. (1485-1509) only English-built ships manned by English sailors were permitted to import certain commodities; and in the reign of Elizabeth (1558-1603) only such vessels could engage in the English coasting trade and fisheries.
The Commonwealth Acts.
The earliest English colonies were exempted by their charters from these restrictions, but under James I. (1603-1625) the colonies were included. For many years the colonists did not heed the Navigation Acts; in consequence, the Dutch, then the chief carriers on the ocean, obtained control of the colonial trade, and thereby amassed great wealth. Jealous of their supremacy, the statesmen of the Commonwealth sought to upbuild England by forcing English trade into English channels; and this policy succeeded. Holland soon fell from her high position as a maritime power, and England, with her far-spreading colonies, succeeded her. The Act of 1645 declared that certain articles should be brought into England only by ships fitted out from England, by English subjects, and manned by Englishmen; this was amended the following year so as to include the colonies. In exchange for the privilege of importing English goods free of duty, the colonists were not to suffer foreign ships to be loaded with colonial goods. In 1651, a stringent Navigation Act was passed by the Long Parliament, the beginning of a series of coercive ordinances extending down to the time of the American Revolution: it provided that the rule as to the importation of goods into England or its territories, in English-built vessels, English manned, should extend to all products "of the growth, production, or manufacture of Asia, Africa, or America, or of any part thereof, ... as well of the English Plantations as others;" but the term "English-built ships" included colonial vessels, in this and all subsequent Acts.
Under the Restoration.
Under the Restoration the Commonwealth law was confirmed and extended (1660). Such enumerated colonial products as the English merchants desired to purchase were to be shipped to no other country than England; but those products which they did not wish might be sent to other markets, provided they did not there interfere in any way with English trade. In all transactions, however, "English-built ships," manned by "English subjects" only, were to be patronized. Three years later (1663) another step was taken. By an Act of that year, such duties were levied as amounted to prohibition of the importation of goods into the colonies except such as had been actually shipped from an English port; thus the colonists were forced to go to England for their supplies,—the mother-country making herself the factor between her colonies and foreign markets.
Repression of intercolonial trade.
A considerable traffic had now sprung up between the colonies. New England merchants were competing with Englishmen in the Southern markets. At the behest of commercial interests in the parent isle, an Act was passed in 1673 seriously crippling this intercolonial trade; all commodities that could have been supplied from England were now subjected to a duty equivalent to that imposed on their consumption in England. From 1651 to 1764 upwards of twenty-five Acts of Parliament were passed for the regulation of traffic between England and her colonies. Each succeeding ministry felt it necessary to adopt some new scheme for monopolizing colonial trade in order to purchase popularity at home. It was 1731 before the home government began to repress the manufacture in the colonies of goods that could be made in England; thereafter numerous Acts were passed by Parliament having this end in view.
England's coercive commercial policy a cause of the Revolution.