Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 3).djvu/125

 in all respects be fulfilled by such foreign country" (8 & 9 Vict., cap. 93, sect. 4).

Rule 5. "No goods shall be imported into, nor shall any goods (except the produce of the fisheries, in British ships) be exported, from any of the British possessions in America by sea, from or to any place other than the United Kingdom, or some other of such possessions, except into or from the several ports in such possessions called 'Free Ports.'" (See 8 & 9 Vict., cap. 93, sect. 2.) The 62nd section of the Act applied this principle to the Mauritius, as well as to the American possessions; while, under the 90th section, the trade of other colonies was regulated by the Queen. Goods could be imported by inland navigation into any place where there was a custom-*house. The rule was not to extend "to prohibit the importation or exportation of goods into or from any ports or places in Newfoundland, or Labrador, in British ships;" and by the 2nd section, certain articles might be imported from Guernsey and Jersey into places where the fishery was carried on, though the same were not free ports. These five rules comprise the Law as it stood in 1847. But it is also as well to give some account of its previous history and its various modifications.

The Act of 1660 established two rules applicable to the Plantation trade, which were deemed of the highest importance to the country: first, that the whole trade of the Plantations should be carried on in "British" ships only; and secondly, that the principal productions of these Plantations should be allowed to be exported only to the mother country, or some other Plantation. A third general rule was intro