Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 3).djvu/123

 these possessions must be in British-owned, and British-built, and British-navigated vessels. Prize ships, if British owned, were, and always have been, entitled to the privileges of British vessels; the system of registering vessels having been first prescribed by the last-named Act.

Having thus stated the principles regulating "British ships," I must now proceed to notice in some detail the more important changes in the Navigation Laws.

These Laws, in 1847, resting as they did on the Act of Parliament then in force, so far as regards The Plantation Trade provided (Rule 1) that "No goods shall be exported from the United Kingdom to any British possession in Asia, Africa, or America, nor to the islands of Guernsey, Jersey, Alderney, or Sark, except in British ships" (8 & 9 Vict., cap. 88, sect. 7). But vessels belonging to the United States may carry goods from this country to the principal British settlements in the East Indies (59 Geo. III., cap. 54, sect. 6). The Sovereign had the power to conclude treaties, allowing the same privilege to the ships of other foreign countries, and some such treaties were actually concluded: e.g. with Austria and in fact Russia (see 8 & 9 Vict., cap. 90, sect. 9).

Rule 2. "No goods shall be carried from any British possession in Asia, Africa, or America, to any other of such possessions, nor from one part of such possessions to another part of the same, except in British ships" (8 & 9 Vict., cap. 88, sect. 10).

Rule 3. "No goods shall be imported into any British possession in Asia, Africa, or America, in any