Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 2).djvu/230

 elsewhere." This Board afforded resources for enlarging and materially benefiting the trade of the United Kingdom by the publication of its statistical returns, and in numerous other ways, and had the exclusive superintendence of the commerce of the plantations, and indeed of their government until 1786, when a Secretary of State was appointed for the colonies, and a new council for the affairs of trade organised on its present plan.

No sooner had England become distracted at home by the civil war of the first Pretender and by the rupture with Charles XII. of Sweden, than the pirates of Barbary issued from their secret haunts, and greatly interrupted every branch of her maritime commerce. In the West Indies, too, the losses sustained by the ravages of the piratical buccaneers became so extensive that the most serious complaints were preferred against the Admiralty for tolerating the grievance, the result being a proclamation offering a reward of 100l. head-money for every captain, 40l. for a lieutenant down to a gunner, 30l. for an inferior officer, and 20l. for every private captured: more than this, any pirate who delivered up his captain or commander was entitled upon his conviction to a reward of 200l.

War, as we have too frequently seen, is a terrible obstacle to all industrial pursuits, and to no branch of commerce—however much a certain class of shipowners may have realised by having their vessels employed as government transports—is it a greater source of