Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 3).djvu/129



With regard to the trade with Europe, the law in 1847 declared that the several sorts of goods hereinafter enumerated, being the produce of Europe, viz., masts, timber, boards, tar, tallow, hemp, flax, currants, raisins, figs, prunes, olive-oil, corn or grain, wine, brandy, tobacco, wool, shumach, madders, madder-roots, barilla, brimstone, bark of oak, cork, oranges, lemons, linseed, rape-seed and clover-seed, could not be imported into the United Kingdom, to be used therein, except in British ships, or in ships of the country of which the goods were the produce, or in ships of the country from which they were usually imported, 8 & 9 Vict., cap. 88, sect. 2. But such goods, not being otherwise prohibited, might, by the 22nd section of that Act, be warehoused for exportation, though brought in other ships; a privilege confirmed by the 3 & 4 Vict., cap. 95.

Some embarrassing questions having, from time to time, arisen as to the right of importing the produce

turn to 23 Geo. III., cap. 26, and 23 Geo. III., cap. 39, where an attempt was made to mend matters by some sort of regulation of trade between the two countries, whereby Great Britain resolved to have the lion's share; and then to 25 Geo. III., cap. 1; 27 Geo. III., cap. 7; and 28 Geo. III., cap. 6, where certain modifications were made, or rather could be made by "Order in Council," and where "thirty enumerated articles" the "growth, produce, or manufactures of the States," might be "carried into the British West Indies from the United States," but then "only by British subjects in British ships"! If my readers are disposed to go further—though I cannot recommend the research—into this wretched system of legislation, they may refer to 31 Geo. III. cap. 38, where the Governors of the West India Islands were allowed to relax certain prohibitions "in case of public emergency;" and to 51 Geo. III., cap. 47, sect. 6, and 58 Geo. III., cap. 27, where we seem to have gained a little more wisdom by extending certain "privileges"!—rights (?)—to an independent and industrious people.]
 * [Footnote: people, who had resolved to govern themselves! My readers may then