and mutually beneficial to Great Britain and her colonies, if the old navigation laws were adhered to."[86] That “the transportation should be in all cases in ships belonging to British subjects.”  That “even British ships should not be generally received into the colonies from any part of Europe, except the dominions of Great Britain.”  That “it is unreasonable that corn and such like products should be restrained to come first to a British port.”  What do all these fine observations signify?  Some of them condemn, as ill practices, things that were never practised at all.  Some recommend to be done, things that always have been done.  Others indeed convey, though obliquely and loosely, some insinuations highly dangerous to our commerce.  If I could prevail on myself to think the author meant to ground any practice upon these general propositions, I should think it very necessary to ask a few questions about some of them.  For instance, what does he mean by talking of an adherence to the old navigation laws?  Does he mean, that the particular law, 12 Car.  II. c. 19, commonly called “The Act of Navigation,” is to be adhered to, and that the several subsequent additions, amendments, and exceptions, ought to be all repealed?  If so, he will make a strange havoc in the whole system of our trade laws, which have been universally acknowledged to be full as well founded in the alterations and exceptions, as the act of Charles the Second in the original provisions; and to pursue full as wisely the great end of that very politic law, the increase of the British navigation.  I fancy the writer could hardly propose anything more alarming to those immediately interested in that navigation than such a repeal.  If he does not mean this, he has got no farther than a nugatory proposition, which nobody can contradict, and for which no man is the wiser.

That “the regulations for the colony trade would be few and simple if the old navigation laws were adhered to,” I utterly deny as a fact.  That they ought to be so, sounds well enough; but this proposition is of the same nugatory nature with some of the former.  The regulations for the colony trade ought not to be more nor fewer, nor more nor less complex, than the occasion requires.  And, as that trade is in a great measure a system of art and restriction, they can neither be few nor simple.  It is true, that the very principle may be destroyed, by multiplying to excess the means of securing it.  Never did a minister depart more from the author’s ideas of simplicity, or more embarrass the trade of America with the multiplicity and intricacy of regulations and ordinances, than his boasted minister of 1764.  That minister seemed to be possessed with something, hardly short of a rage, for regulation and restriction.  He had so multiplied bonds, certificates, affidavits, warrants, sufferances, and cockets; had supported them with such severe penalties, and extended them without the least consideration of circumstances to