Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 2.djvu/478

 Parliament was too wise to consider the suggestion of Nicholson seriously; but in 1699, it adopted the rule that no wool or woollen goods produced by the plantations in America should be transported from one Colony to another, or from one point in a Colony to another point in the same Colony, or to any foreign place whatever. Only a few years before, the English Government had expressed the most emphatic disapproval of the order passed by the General Assembly forbidding the exportation of wool or woolfels, on the ground that it conflicted with the spirit of the Navigation laws. England had now become apprehensive lest the transfer of wool and woolfels from Colony to Colony should diminish the volume of her own trade in clothing with her American possessions. There was in the statute no prohibition of the making of woollen goods for private use.

It was the logical effect of these restrictive laws relating to navigation and the exportation of wool and woollen products, that they stimulated a manufacturing spirit in the Colonies. The Navigation Acts were passed chiefly because England was unable to compete with Holland in the carrying trade of the world owing to the greater cheapness with which a cargo could be transported in the bottoms of the latter nationality. The exclusion of the Dutch had signified to the planters of Virginia not only the payment of higher freight rates in the conveyance of their tobacco to England, but the payment, moreover, of higher prices for the goods which they purchased from the English merchants for their servants, slaves, and their own families. This resulted from the fact, that now that the competition of the Hollanders was removed, the merchants of the mother country were only restrained in their charges by competition among themselves. During the years in which