1651.
- tions of America except with a regular licence. And
on the 9th of October of the following year the measure which for nearly two centuries was known as the "celebrated" Navigation Act of Cromwell came into operation. By this Act the navigation of the Dutch received a very serious blow; declaring as it did that no goods or commodities whatever of the growth, production, or manufacture of Asia, Africa, or America should be imported either into England, or Ireland, or any of the plantations of Great Britain, except in British-built ships, owned by British subjects, and of which the master and three-fourths of the crew belonged to that country. The unequivocal object of this clause was to secure to England, without however considering the interests of her colonists, the whole carrying trade of the world, Europe alone excepted.
Their object and effect. Having done all that then appeared possible to secure the carrying trade of Asia, Africa, and America, the English Parliament now sought to obtain as much as was practicable of the import trade of Europe. Accordingly they further enacted that no goods of the growth, production, or manufacture of any country in Europe should be imported into Great Britain except in British ships, owned and navigated by British subjects, "or in such ships as were the real property of the people of the country or place in which the goods were produced, or from which they could only be, or most usually were exported."[1]
This stringent provision could only be aimed at the carrying trade of the Dutch, who had little or no
- ↑ Details of the Navigation Act of 1651 (confirmed in 1660) will be found in Macpherson, ii. pp. 442-444.
