Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 2).djvu/248

 forfeiture of ship and cargo, the importation into any part of English America of sugar, rum, or molasses grown in plantations not of English origin. Although this bill failed in the House of Lords, an Act was passed in 1733 for encouraging the sugar trade, the effect of which was to grant drawbacks on re-exportations from Great Britain of West India sugar, and to impose duties on the importation into America of the produce of foreign plantations. From the preamble of this Act foreign rivals appear to have surpassed the English colonists in the quality of their sugar, and to have supplanted their shipping in the carrying trade: so that the English professed they were unable to carry it on without relief from the parliament of Great Britain.

Following this example, all classes, as a matter of course, appealed for protection, and an artificial system grew up which, even if justifiable at the beginning, proved, when the separation of the colonies took place, to be altogether impracticable. The shipowners at home were equally ready to find pretexts for parliamentary interference in their favour. Thus, in 1749-50, they held a meeting in the city of London, "to promote British shipping and British navigation," at which sixty gentlemen were present, and "the Case" then drawn up was signed by fifty-nine of them. Their object seems to have been to prevent foreign ships taking away, as back-*freight, goods entitled to drawback or bounty; the system of bounties practised by other nations operat-*