generally, legalised, subject to certain prohibitions against the importation of particular articles, some of which were afterwards removed, while others (e.g. those against pirated books, counterfeit coin, &c., and the restrictions on gunpowder, arms, &c.) remained. A tariff of differential duties on foreign goods, of which duties one-tenth (subsequently increased to one-fourth) was to be remitted, when the goods were imported through an English warehouse, was, at the same date, enforced.
The principle of this tariff and of the practice of remission were retained; but legislation was constantly effecting small changes, to meet the wishes or, rather, the demands of colonial legislatures which perhaps, naturally, looked only to their own interests.
Such may be taken as the intermediate history of the Navigation Law as it affected the Plantation or Colonial trade.
First infringement of the principle of confining the American trade to British vessels. The first decided infringement of the general principle of confining the trade to British ships took place on the conclusion of the treaty with America, the effect of which has been described.
In 1808, when the King of Portugal emigrated to Brazil, the same privileges, as had been granted to the United States, were extended to the inhabitants of the Portuguese possessions in South America, by the Act (48 Geo. III., cap. 11) which allowed the produce of those territories to be imported thence into Great Britain and Ireland in vessels built in those territories, or made prize by Portuguese ships, and owned and navigated by Portuguese subjects resident in the said territories. After the conclusion of the treaty with Portugal in 1810, a further Act
