Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land eBook

William Wentworth
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 352 pages of information about Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land.

Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land eBook

William Wentworth
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 352 pages of information about Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land.
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
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Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.