These early restrictions on trade and transportation formed the basis on which the whole future protective or restrictive policy has been erected. Ship-owners and land-owners first began this selfish policy. As society made progress, and the manufacturing interest became rich and powerful, that interest, in many nations, was admitted within the pale of the favored classes, while yet oppressed in others. In other states these interests have divided, and each, in turn, has had its day of plunder or oppression. Thus was gradually consolidated, by authority of centuries of time and prejudice, a combination of the rich to live on the poor, and to retain their white slavery, while they profess such abhorrence for black; and, under the sophisms of national independence, drain of specie, nursery of seamen, home industry, human labor, free-soil labor, &c. &c., the people are made to believe their burdens blessings, and this Charta Maratima of Cromwell and Charles, though in violation of the great charter of Runnymead, which, against the influence of the great, guaranteed "to all merchants to go and come at pleasure, and to buy and sell by the ancient and allowed customs, without any evil toll, except in time of war," as a boon, instead of a curse.

But now, at last, the world begins to open its eyes, and the scales to drop from them. The days of class legislation are numbered, and those who have been accustomed to live upon the legal plunder of others, the "vols reglementaires" of Mons. Clement, begin to tremble at the approach of just and equal legislation. The repeal of the most objectionable parts of the navigation laws, just now effected by Lord John Russell, with the repeal of the corn laws, by Sir Robert Peel, constitute the most important and beneficent acts of legislation of the present century, and must greatly tend to ameliorate the condition of the poor and improve that of all.

We shall endeavor to show, as briefly as we can, the truth of the late remarks of the Earle of Carlyle, late Lord Morpeth, in the House of Lords, that "the effect of the navigation laws was to bother trade all over the world, by doubling freights and multiplying distances, by creating a host of artificial difficulties and making the navigation of the ocean a more arduous task than the ancient poets had described.

The author of the work at the head of this article is the

son of David Ricardo, long distinguished as one of the ablest writers on political economy, and, being a member of the committee of the British parliament to which the subject was submitted for investigation, after a full examination of all the evidence reported, in July, 1847, thus declares his opinion: "I am free to acknowledge that it confirmed my previous impressions of the impolicy and mischievous tendency of the maratime laws of Great Britain; and I have relied mainly, in this treatise, on the testimony of witnesses examined on both sides of the question to substantiate the opinions I have expressed, and the arguments by which these opinions are maintained..

The system of the navigation laws commenced as early as 1313, in the reign of Edward II., but that name was not regularly assumed until the famous act of 1650, in the time of Cromwell. In the time of Edward II. there was but one market for all England. By law, of that day, every thing intended for exportation was compelled to be brought to one place, and this port was called the king's staple, and the goods brought there were the staples, and the merchants the staple merchants. Hence articles of commerce are still called the staples of a country. At times, the number of staples or markets were increased. The staples, which seems extraordinary enough, were not always held in England, and the merchant was frequently compelled to carry his goods to several places in Brabant, Flanders, Artois, and afterwards to Antwerp, before he could sell them, and foreign merchants had to do the same thing before their goods could be imported. Finally, the staples were brought back to England and fixed in towns, to suit the convenience and interests of men of influence, for their own benefit, without regard to the convenience of buyer or seller, and directly in violation of the guarantee of Magna Charta. For a wonder, once the charter prevailed, on the complaints of merchants, and, for a while, they were allowed to buy and sell where they pleased an instance of respect towards the constitution worthy of imitation in our day. However, the spirit of monopoly was never long checked by regard for constitutional obligations, for again these staples were fixed, sometimes in England and at other times on the continent. Sometimes the number of merchants was limited and fixed, as well as the staples. Calais was frequently the market-general

of the kingdom. "From that day to this," says Mr. Ricardo, "the law has never rested from meddling, and has never meddled but to do mischief. At that early period herrings were to be caught and salted by rule. No iron to be exported, nor were cloth, butter, sheep, malt or beer. Merchants were confined to certain goods, and artificers to certain occupations." Persons brought up to husbandry could not quit it, and the dress of all, except of the nobili ty, was prescribed. Wages were fixed, and workmen compelled to labor at such rates. "Thus," says our author, "the staple was of the same order as the navigation laws, and the lawgivers at that time, in their wildest dreams of legislative restriction, could scarcely have imagined that the fruits which sprung from it would, in our day, have compelled a cargo to sail from Havre to New-York, before it could be admitted to Liverpool. It was given in evidence before the committee of 1844, and it was one of a hundred similar cases, that a cargo of American hides, brought from Europe, and being, by virtue of the navigation laws, denied entrance at Liverpool, was re-salted, re-shipped to NewYork, landed in America, and thence brought back for sale at Liverpool. The merchant of the fourteenth century was compelled to send his hides to Calais to be sold; the merchant of our time must make the voyage to New-York and back again before an English port can become his staple."

At the commencement of these restrictive laws, professedly for the protection of the English navy, it must be remembered that the government possessed no vessels, and by "navy of the kingdom," was meant all the merchant ships. And so no one was allowed to sell a ship to a foreigner: for whenever the government needed the use of vessels for the purposes of war, all vessels, great and small, were impressed, as well as the seamen." These vessels, our author supposes, were rather less than the mackerel boats of the present day. Of these impressments, we are informed that the ship-owners at the time bitterly complained. They said that they were deprived of their ships,

"Such was the effect of impressment in the late war," says Mr. G. F. Young, in his evidence before the committee, "that at its conclusion there was scarce an able seaman left in the whole mercantile marine of this country," and Mr. Ricardo says, "and it may be safely inferred that there was scarcely an efficient commercial ship."

the masters and mariners driven into other trades or service, commerce ruined, their ships rendered useless, and, of course, the "navy of the kingdom" reduced by this protection (1370). Here the delusion was that parliament, and not trade, could create a mercantile navy, for no other was contemplated. The king did not pretend to build one. They did not suppose that to encourage commerce must necessarily lead to the creation of additional means of transporting that commerce. The government relied for defence, as well as for carrying on offensive wars, entirely upon private vessels and private seamen, and yet did every thing it could to destroy commerce and annoy the seamen and capitalists. The pretence was favor to home shipping, on condition of the right, at will, to impress both ships and seamen. No wonder, on many occasions, it came near ruining private shippers. It was really "buying protection at a high price," and as often helped foreign shipping as it injured its own. Well may Mr. Ricardo say of their system, even now, that it creates of "their ships a kind of Africa, from which we seize slaves to fight." Many commodities, of great importance to the owners of freights, were prohibited, for instance, corn, &c. It was "convenient to influential persons." The great lords owned the lands, hence the early commencement of the corn laws. During the late famine, the quantity of corn imported in five months of 1847 could not have been carried by British vessels in time to have saved them from starvation; and yet, at that very moment, and again, not many months since, the ship-owners of England petitioned their parliament not to allow the trade in corn to be free, and while they thus opposed an increase of material for freights, they called upon government "to contemplate the ruin, (that is the cant word) everywhere, that must inevitably come upon this great interest." Mr. Ricardo computes that the abolition of duties on live animals, butter and cheese, grain and flour, sugar and coffee, between the years 1842 and 1847, has found freight enough for 5000 ships. "It was believed," says Mr. Ricardo, "that they could make ships by act of parliament, although there were no goods for them to carry, and no persons to take passage in them," so small was then the commerce and population of England. Not withstanding, in 1381, (1 and 5 Richard II.) was passed the first of the series of those acts, known as the naviga

tion laws, which are now so innumerable as not only to perplex the merchants in making out their cargoes, in every part of the world, but to confound the ablest lawyers of Westminster Hall.

By this Act of Richard, no subject could ship, outward or homeward, any merchandize, save in ships of the king's allegiance. And even as early as this, we find the old foolery, which has followed us to this day, and for ever, cants the danger of "exporting specie," and "the balance of trade," and all exportation of gold or silver, in coin or bullion or vessel, or even by exchange, was prohibited; and that their objects might not be defeated, no body except lords and other great men, real merchants, and the king's soldiers, were allowed to leave the kingdom; and London was the only port from whence they could pass over to the continent. If wines were once imported they were to be sold at a fixed price, and claret, being French, was prohibited. "Notwithstanding these cross currents and adverse winds of law, trade and shipping increased, not by their help, says our author, but in spite of them." Such, he says, was the wisdom of our ancestors.

It was, for the first time, during the reign of Henry VII. that it was required that British ships should be manned by a majority of Englishmen. In the reign of Elizabeth, it is acknowledged in the preamble of an act of parliament, (1 Eliz., c. 13.) that these laws had caused disturbances and retaliations, and besides the great displeasure grown up betwixt the foreign princes and the kings of that realm, "the merchants had been sore grieved and endangered," and by way of amelioration, imports in foreign ships were allowed, on payment of double duties. The masters of vessels were also required to be English subjects. And "for the further maintenance of shipping, the increase of fishermen and mariners," and not for the good of their souls," as expressly declared, it was enacted in 1568, that it "should not be lawful to eat flesh on Wednesdays and Saturdays."

These navigation laws, had now been upwards of 200 years in operation, and still, as Mr. Ricardo says, there was "no wondrous navy." In the mean time, Holland, that had no navigation laws to protect and encourage her shipping, caught the fish in the British seas and supplied the English, while parliament failed to make either fisherVOL. XVI.—NO. 32.

36