Still, it is true that, for a century, causes had been in operation tending to prepare things for this great result.  In the year 1660 the English Act of Navigation was passed; the first and grand object of which seems to have been, to secure to England the whole trade with her plantations.[10] It was provided by that act, that none but English ships should transport American produce over the ocean, and that the principal articles of that produce should be allowed to be sold only in the markets of the mother country.  Three years afterwards another law was passed, which enacted, that such commodities as the Colonies might wish to purchase should be bought only in the markets of the mother country.  Severe rules were prescribed to enforce the provisions of these laws, and heavy penalties imposed on all who should violate them.  In the subsequent years of the same reign, other statutes were enacted to re-enforce these statutes, and other rules prescribed to secure a compliance with these rules.  In this manner was the trade to and from the Colonies restricted, almost to the exclusive advantage of the parent country.  But laws, which rendered the interest of a whole people subordinate to that of another people, were not likely to execute themselves, nor was it easy to find many on the spot, who could be depended upon for carrying them into execution.  In fact, these laws were more or less evaded or resisted, in all the Colonies.  To enforce them was the constant endeavor of the government at home; to prevent or elude their operation, the perpetual object here.  “The laws of navigation,” says a living British writer, “were nowhere so openly disobeyed and contemned as in New England.”  “The people of Massachusetts Bay,” he adds, “were from the first disposed to act as if independent of the mother country, and having a governor and magistrates of their own choice, it was difficult to enforce any regulation which came from the English Parliament, adverse to their interests.”  To provide more effectually for the execution of these laws, we know that courts of admiralty were afterwards established by the crown, with power to try revenue causes, as questions of admiralty, upon the construction given by the crown lawyers to an act of Parliament; a great departure from the ordinary principles of English jurisprudence, but which has been maintained, nevertheless, by the force of habit and precedent, and is adopted in our own existing systems of government.

“There lie,” says another English writer, whose connection with the Board of Trade has enabled him to ascertain many facts connected with Colonial history, “There lie among the documents in the board of trade and state-paper office, the most satisfactory proofs, from the epoch of the English Revolution in 1688, throughout every reign, and during every administration, of the settled purpose of the Colonies to acquire direct independence and positive sovereignty.”  Perhaps this may be stated somewhat too strongly; but it cannot be denied, that, from the very nature of the establishments here, and from the general character of the measures respecting their concerns early adopted and steadily pursued by the English government, a division of the empire was the natural and necessary result to which every thing tended.[11]