Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 1.djvu/386

 been suppressed, in consequence of the removal by death of the guiding hand of Bacon himself, when one of the leading merchants of London, John Bland, acting as the representative of the people of Virginia and Maryland, addressed a singularly able and convincing petition to the English authorities in charge of the affairs of the Colonies, in favor of the repeal of the Navigation laws, and the statements marshalled in this skilful paper show how injurious to the prosperity of the planters these measures had proved to be after an operation of many years. He asserted that the Navigation Act of 1660 had its origin in the solicitations of the English wholesale and retail dealers in tobacco, to whose obvious advantage it was that England should receive all of this commodity produced in the Colonies, either for distribution among the English population, or for transshipment to Holland. In both instances the trader secured a large profit. As long as he was not contending with Dutch competition, he was in a position to purchase Virginian tobacco at the very lowest rates; thus he often bought it at half a penny a pound, and afterwards sold it at an advance of three or four shillings.

Mr. Bland declared that the Navigation Act was not passed for the benefit of English merchants alone. It was notorious that the vessels of Holland were handled so much more inexpensively than those of England, that they were able to underbid the latter in the charges for freight. It was an inability to compete with Dutch bottoms in an open contest which led the owners of English vessels to solicit, in company with English traders, the passage of an ordinance that would place the Dutch masters of ships