been, or shall hereafter be taken by any of his Majesty’s
vessels of war, or by any private, or other vessel,
and condemned as lawful prize in any court of admiralty)
nor any vessel built or rebuilt upon any foreign-made
keel or bottom, in the manner heretofore practised
and allowed, although owned by British subjects, and
navigated according to law, shall be any longer entitled
to any of the privileges or advantages of a British
built ship, or of a ship owned by British subjects,
and all the said privileges and advantages shall hereafter
be confined to such ships only as are wholly
of the built of Great Britain or Ireland, Guernsey,
Jersey, and the Isle of Man, or of some of the plantations,
islands, or territories in Asia, Africa, or America,
which now belong, or at the time of building such
vessels did belong, or which may hereafter belong
to or be in the possession of his Majesty; provided
always, that nothing hereinbefore contained shall extend
to prohibit such foreign built vessels only as before
the 1st of May, 1786, did truly and without fraud
wholly belong to any of the people of Great Britain
or Ireland, Guernsey, Jersey, and the Isle of Man,
or of some of the plantations, etc. etc.”
Here then we have cited the two leading clauses
in the two leading acts of navigation, and
both prove that the objects which this country had
in view, were to create nurseries of seamen for her
navy, and to secure to her subjects, in whatever part
of her extended empire they might reside, the benefit
of the carrying trade. The imposition, therefore,
of any duties on her subjects in any of her colonies,
greater than those which are levied under similar
circumstances on her subjects at home, far from being
in unison with the liberal and enlightened policy of
the navigation laws, is a broad deviation from their
fundamental principles, and the creation of an entire
system of exclusion, such as the one under consideration
is, a fortiori, an utter violation of their
letter and spirit. That any prohibitory duties
of this sort could ever have been enacted, will appear
still more surprising, if we look a little further
into the policy which this country has pursued with
respect to her other fisheries, particularly the cod
fishery on the banks of Newfoundland, and parts adjacent.
For when by the 15th Charles II. cap. 7. she enlarged
the scope of her great navigation act, and to the
two main original objects contemplated in this act,
viz. the creation of nurseries for seamen, and
the securing to her subjects the carrying trade, she
superadded a third, viz. that of making herself
the entrepot for the deposit of all goods and
commodities, whether the growth, production, or manufacture
of Europe, or of her colonies, it having been foreseen
that this alteration in her maritime code would be
prejudicial to the cod fisheries, and that it would
most materially conduce to their prosperity and extension