[12] An American annual revenue of less than two thousand pounds cost Great Britain between seven and eight thousand pounds a year (Bancroft, orig, ed. v. 88, citing the Grenville Papers).
[13] Vol. III. pp. 182, 267, and 381.
[14] A summary of these acts may be found in Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, ii. 201; and they are discussed by John Adams in a series of letters to William Tudor (Works, vol. x. passim). The first act is understood to be a substantial reënactment of a law of the Long Parliament in 1651, suggested by Sir George Downing, a native of New England.
[15] Such, at least, seems to be the effect of the words "in English-built shipping", in the act of 1663, excluding those "of the built and belonging to" the colonies which were permitted by the act of 1660. But were the commodities and manufactures of England included among those of "Europe" which could be exported to the colonies only in English-built ships, or could the colonists send their own ships for them?
[16] From overlooking this option, this clause of the act has received unmerited obloquy. It was simple justice to the British trader.
[17] This legislation may be traced in the Table to the Statutes at Large, vol. ix., title Plantations, and, in part, in John Adams's Works, vol. x. 350, note. See also Franklin's Works, iv. 250, 400.
[18] Wealth of Nations, vol. ii. 435.
[19] Colonial Policy, vol. i. 7, 239.
[20] Cf. on this point a paper by Charles Deane in the Amer. Antiq. Soc. Proc., Oct., 1886.
[21] Rights of Great Britain Asserted, 87. But see Franklin's opinion as to these bounties (Works, iv. 225).