Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 3).djvu/140

 shipping the produce of any State, to be also named in such order, shall, although not situated within the dominions of such State, be port or ports for the use of such State in the trade of such ships with all ports of the British dominions, &c., in as full and ample a manner as if such port or ports were within the dominions of such State, &c.; and so long as such order shall be declared to be in force, it shall be lawful to import, &c., any goods in the ships of such State, which, by the laws in force at the time of such importation, might then be imported in such ships from a port of the country to which they belonged, and so to import such goods upon the like terms as the same could there be imported from the national ports of such ships." Subsequently to this Act, several Conventions of Navigation, to some of which I have already briefly referred, were carried out, whereby the privileges just described were granted to various other nations.

The first was with Prussia, on behalf of the Zollverein States, whereby the mouths of the Meuse, Elbe, Weser, and Ems, and those of all the navigable rivers between the Elbe and the Meuse were made free; thus offering means of communication between