population, in wealth, and in that spirit which makes population and wealth availing. The period of indefinite relations was passed; the first phase of revolution, the period of definite subjection, was begun. For now-1660- that Act of Navigation of which that of 1651 was but the outline, and which Lords and Commons, historians and orators, united in extolling as the palladium of English commerce, a charta maritima second only to Magna Charta itself, first took its place on the statute-book. "It will enable your Majesty to give the law to foreign princes abroad, as your royal predecessors have done before you,” said the Speaker of the House of Commons to Charles, as he presented the bill for approval. "By this act," says an historian of commerce, we have absolutely excluded all other nations from any direct trade or correspondence with our American plantations." By this act, a philosopher might have said, you have opened a breach betwixt yourselves and your Colonies, which every year will widen, till the sword completes what the pen began, and severs you from them forever. 66 It might have been supposed that there was little in those Colonies, as yet, to excite the avaricious longings of commercial monopoly. But monopoly has a keen eye, if not a prophetic one; and seldom does an immediate interest escape its eager search. "No sugar, tobacco, cotton-wool, indigo, ginger, fustic or other dyeing woods, of the growth or manufacture of our Asian, African, or American colonies, shall be shipped from the said colonies to any place but England, Ireland, or to some other of his Majesty's said plantations, there to be landed, under forfeiture as before. And to make effectual this last-named clause, for the sole benefit of our own navigation and people, the owners of the ships shall give bonds at their setting out for the due performance thereof." Thus reads the thirteenth clause. A few years later, Ireland, which, as you will observe, is here put upon the same footing with England, was excluded by name. You will observe, too, that the American Colonies stand last upon the list; so much had England yet to learn, both about their importance and their character. The articles mentioned in this clause obtained the name of "enumerated commodities," henceforth an irritating and odious name in our colonial history. Thus England took her position towards the Colonies deliberately and definitely. Henceforth they were to work for her; to grow strong, that they might add to her strength; to grow rich, that they might aid her in heaping up riches; but not to grow either in strength or in wealth, except by the means, and in the direction, that she prescribed. It behooves us to ponder well this thirteenth clause; to weigh it word by word, that we may understand the spirit in which it was conceived, and the spirit which it awakened. Its object was the general increase of shipping and navigation, "wherein,' says the preamble, "under the good providence and protection of God, the wealth, strength, and safety of this kingdom are so much concerned.' Words well chosen, and whose truth none can gainsay; for it is only by the portion of truth which is mixed up with them that radical errors ever succeed in commending themselves to the human mind. And here the proportion of truth was not only large, for national prosperity is closely allied with commercial prosperity, but the error was singularly in harmony with the opinions and feelings of the age. "So long as your Majesty is master at sea," said the Speaker, "your merchants will be welcome wherever they come." Change the form of expression, and what does this mean, but that superior strength is to dictate the laws of commerce, as it dictates the terms of a treaty? And what is this but the alliance of commerce, whose power is founded upon interest, -I use the word in its true sense, with the sword, whose power is founded upon fear? Follow it a little further; push it to its logical consequences, and you have that simple formula, so repugnant to truth, to morality, and to religion, My gain is your loss; your loss is my gain.* * A great empire has been established for the sole purpose of raising up a nation of customers, who should be obliged to buy from the shops of our different producers all the goods with which those could supply them."-SMITH, Wealth, &c., B. IV. Ch. VIII. Vol. II. p. 517. But could we expect men to foresee the disastrous consequences of this narrow and selfish policy, who undertook, as this Parliament did, in the same session in which they passed the Navigation Act, to encourage the "fish trade" by prohibiting the eating of flesh on Wednesday? It was a necessary consequence of this system, that England should henceforth watch American industry in order to check it whenever it entered upon a track which she deemed inconsistent with her own interest, rather than with a view of encouraging it whenever it opened a branch useful to the Colonies. The enumerated list was ever at hand, a happy embodiment of the great principle, and susceptible of indefinite extension. Not many years passed before rice and molasses came more largely into demand; and the spirit of enterprise was presently rewarded by their prompt insertion upon the catalogue. Then the hardy trader, who, at the hazard of his life, had penetrated to the banks of the Ohio, and established trading-posts in the wilderness, was cheered in his industry by seeing his furs and peltries honorably classed with the other privileged articles which were reserved exclusively for the English market. Copper ore stands close by their side, an enumeration of the same year, the eighth of George I., and showing how well prepared the House of Hanover came to tread in the footsteps of the House of Stuart. A still wider sweep was taken by George II., when pitch, tar, turpentine, masts, yards, and bowsprits were condemned by the ready Yeas of the House of Commons to make a voyage to England- and eleven weeks in those days was nearly the average length of the voyage- before they could be offered at any other market. The same spirit extended to royal charters. Already, in the charter of Pennsylvania, the right of taxation had been expressly reserved to Parliament. And when the charter of Massachusetts was renewed by William and Mary, or rather a new charter granted after the arbitrary sequestration of the first by Charles, all the pine forests of Maine, not already granted to individuals, were treated as the property of the King, and every tree in them of more than twenty-four inches diameter at above a foot from the ground reserved to furnish masts for the royal navy. A hundred pounds sterling was the penalty for cutting one of those trees without a special license, with the addition of twenty lashes on the bare back if it was done in disguise. All that remained to The position was taken. do was to enforce the law. and they were easily found. There were already officers of the customs, with their registers of entry and clearance. And now, to protect the interests of the royal navy, a new officer was appointed, -a "Surveyor-General of the King's Woods"; and, as he could not watch them all in person, he was |