English Navigation Laws.
First Prohibitory Act, A.D. 1646.
Although the English people were jealous of the maritime power of Holland, and had often been annoyed by her arrogance, the two nations were still at peace. England, distracted by civil war, was not then prepared to adopt legislative measures which had for their object the curtailment of the commerce and maritime influence of the Dutch; but her rulers felt that they ought not to further encourage that influence by granting to the ships of their rivals the same advantages in her colonies they had so long possessed in her home ports. The possessions of England were steadily increasing in population and importance, and though she could not have contemplated such a country as America has now become,[175] she saw sufficient in its early progress to justify the resolution to exclude the Dutch from participating in a trade she had herself established, and which bade fair to afford a large amount of valuable employment to her merchant shipping. Consequently, as soon as the English Parliament found time amid the domestic troubles, it enacted that no one in any of the ports of the Plantations of Virginia, Bermuda, “Barbadoes, and other places in America,” should suffer any goods or produce of the manufacture or growth of the plantations to be carried away to foreign ports except in English ships.[176]
Further Acts, 1650,
1651.
The shipowners of England speedily discovered that, under the circumstances in which they were placed, they were now legislating in a direction which, if not the wisest, was the only one that could at the time afford them relief and increase the means of obtaining remunerative employment for their property. Through their influence the policy thus initiated was pursued and strengthened. Four years afterwards they procured the passing of an Act prohibiting all foreign ships whatever from trading with the plantations of America except with a regular licence. And on the 9th of October of the following year the measure which for nearly two centuries was known as the “celebrated” Navigation Act of Cromwell came into operation. By this Act the navigation of the Dutch received a very serious blow; declaring as it did that no goods or commodities whatever of the growth, production, or manufacture of Asia, Africa, or America should be imported either into England, or Ireland, or any of the plantations of Great Britain, except in British-built ships, owned by British subjects, and of which the master and three-fourths of the crew belonged to that country. The unequivocal object of this clause was to secure to England, without however considering the interests of her colonists, the whole carrying trade of the world, Europe alone excepted.
Their object and effect.
Having done all that then appeared possible to secure the carrying trade of Asia, Africa, and America, the English Parliament now sought to obtain as much as was practicable of the import trade of Europe. Accordingly they further enacted that no goods of the growth, production, or manufacture of any country in Europe should be imported into Great Britain except in British ships, owned and navigated by British subjects, “or in such ships as were the real property of the people of the country or place in which the goods were produced, or from which they could only be, or most usually were exported.”[177]
This stringent provision could only be aimed at the carrying trade of the Dutch, who had little or no produce of their own to export, and who for the reasons already mentioned had obtained a virtual monopoly of the carrying trade to many foreign markets. In such acts as these the long stifled feelings of animosity, animated by deep commercial jealousy which had been smouldering for years against the Dutch, at last found expression and relief. So strong indeed had these feelings become, that when the States despatched an embassy to England to solicit a revocation of the navigation laws just passed, it was found necessary to appoint a guard to protect the envoys from the popular resentment openly expressed against them.
War declared between Great Britain and Holland, April 1652.