Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 3).djvu/146

 while, on the other hand, American corn landed in Holland could not be brought to England in a Bremen ship; and these difficulties were, in the case of corn, considerably increased by the difficulty of pronouncing upon the actual origin of the corn, as none but the most experienced dealers in grain could decide such a question, and, even with them, it must often have been mere guess work. A case occurred in which timber from Memel was sent to British North America, and, afterwards, brought to England at the low differential duty then existing. The law, at that time, permitted the produce of British possessions abroad to be imported, without its being described as the produce of those possessions; a tolerated evasion, it is clear, of the Navigation Law. But in the case of a ship arriving from Hayti, bringing a cargo of Haytian produce, the master described his ship as a Swedish ship, there being, in point of fact, no Haytian ships. In this case, the goods were liable to forfeiture; but they were allowed to be warehoused for exportation, and the vessel was permitted to depart. A Swedish ship was clearly inadmissible under the 16th Section of the Navigation Act.

Perhaps one of the greatest absurdities attending the practical working of the Navigation Law was that which related to the "naturalisation" of goods, the produce of Asia, Africa, and America, which, when once landed in Europe, were, by this Act, not admissible into the ports of Great Britain, even in British ships, for home consumption.

Two remarkable cases came under my own experience, so curiously illustrative of the laxity and stringency of the law respectively, as to deserve espe