In 1621 we get the first of a series of orders and letters sent out by the King to the colonial governors with the object of having all colonial goods brought to England and brought in English ships. In 1624 a proclamation ordered that no tobacco should be imported in foreign bottoms. In 1629 another proclamation re enacted the old navigation laws as to English trade generally. In 1633 the question of the colonial trade was referred to a committee who reported strongly in favor of confining such trade to English ships, and an order was ac cordingly issued to this effect. In 1637 letters were sent out to the governors in America and the West Indies ordering them to "strictly and resolutely° forbid all trade and traffic with the Dutch.
During the Civil War the Dutch seem to have got more and more of the trade of the English colonies into their hands, and it be came necessary to revive the policy which had been pursued under Charles I. This was done in the act of 1651, which led to the Dutch war. The commonwealth wished to do a popular thing by appealing to the English hatred of the Dutch, and they no doubt also intended to give the ship owners some compensation for the overwhelming misfortunes which the Civil War had brought on them. The restrictions of the act were not new, nor was it enforced any more effectively than previous acts had been. Cromwell indeed did not believe in the policy, and so great was the danger to English shipping from the Spanish and Royalist privateers that the government was only too glad to see trade kept alive in neutral ships. In the colonies the statute seems to have been generally disregarded. In 1660 (12 C. II, c. 18) the act of 1651 was re-enacted with cer tain additions. The act of 1651 had declared that no goods "of the growth, production or manufacture of Asia, Africa or America° should be imported into England except in English or colonial ships. Goods from Europe might come either in English vessels or in the ships of the country which produced the goods. As Holland was not a producer she would be particularly affected by this provision. In the 1660 act the various clauses were made more precise. Both the import trade and the export trade of the plantations were to be carried in ships, English built, English owned and manned by a crew of whom three parts were English. By a later statute (14 C. II, c. 11) colonial shipping was put on the same footing as English for all the purposes of the Naviga tion Acts. Goods from Europe were subject to
the same restrictions as in the act of 1651, i.e., they might be imported either in English ships or in ships of the country of origin. No at tempt was made to restrict the export of Eng lish goods to English ships except in so far as the plantation trade was concerned.
The policy of developing the warehousing trade through the Navigation Acts as outlined by Charles I was again taken up by his son. A number of commodities — sugar, tobacco, cotton, wool, indigo, ginger, fustick and dye woods— were "enumerated," and could only be exported from the colonies either to England or to another English colony. Rice and naval stores were added to the list in 1706, and copper and beaver skins in 1722.
The act of 1663 (15 C. II, c. 7) further extended the policy of making England a great entrepot by enacting that commodities of the growth or manufacture of Europe that were needed by the colonists should be shipped from England in English or colonial vessels.
Thus, according' to the Navigation Acts, the bulk of colonial produce had to be brought to the mother country, and the colonists were bound to take their manufactures from her or through her.
It should be observed that by these acts the Scotch were shut out from the plantation trade and were not even.reckoned as English for the purpose of making up a crew(13 & 14 C. II, c. 11) until the act of union. They petitioned to be allowed to trade with the colonies, but a commission reported strongly against it because such liberty would bring infinite loss to His Majesty's customs and "much prejudice" to the English.
As to Ireland, enumerated goods could be imported there, according to the act of 1660, and it seemed as if an Irish warehousing system might have developed since food was so cheap that many ships engaged in the colonial trade went into Irish ports to victual. English jeal ousy of Ireland was, however, too strong for her to be allowed to encroach on a province which England regarded as the foundation of her prosperity. An act was passed in 1670 (22 & 23 C. II, c. 26) by which the staple colonial commodities were henceforth brought to Eng land only. In 1695 Ireland was prohibited from receiving even non-enumerated commodities as the Bristol merchants complained of the injury done to their trade.