Page:Craik History of British Commerce Vol 2.djvu/91

Rh of London, which consumed a great part of the present stock; by our wars abroad; and by our growing luxuries, which drew to other uses what formerly was left wholly to run in the channel of trade." "However," he adds, "when the kingdom had recovered these losses and shocks, which we have reason to think it had perfectly done about 1680 (trade augmenting all the while, and becoming more extensive), its wealth grew faster towards the latter end of this last era of thirty years than before: so that there is more than probable room to conjecture that about 1688 it came to reach the annual increase of two millions." There is much, of course, that is merely theoretical, and far enough from conclusive, in these speculations; but they are curious at least, if not perfectly convincing, and may be admitted to have a general, though not an exact and absolute, truth.

Of the measures affecting commerce that were passed by the legislature in the present period, the most important was the statute of the 12 Car. II. c. 18, entitled an Act for the Encouraging and Encreasing of Shipping and Navigation, and popularly known by the name of the Navigation Act. This famous statute was in the main merely a re-enactment of the statute passed by the Rump Parliament in October, 1651; the principle of which was, as explained in the last Chapter, to confine absolutely to English ships the carriage of all goods imported into any part of the dominions of England from Asia, Africa, or America; and to English ships, or ships of the particular country from which the goods were imported, the carriage of all goods brought into England from any other country of Europe. In the new Act, the latter and most important provision was so far modified as to be confined to goods imported from Russia and Turkey, and to certain goods only from other European countries. But this was in reality a very slight mitigation of the restriction; for the articles in question comprised all the most important English imports, such as timber, salt, pitch, tar, hemp, raisins, figs, oils, grain, wine, spirits, &c.; so that it was scarcely possible that a full cargo of goods could be made up for England in any country of Europe without some