CHAPTER V.

English Navigation Laws—First Prohibitory Act, 1646—Further Acts, 1650-1651—Their object and effect—War declared between Great Britain and Holland, July 1652—The English capture prizes—Peace of 1654—Alleged complaints against the Navigation Acts of Cromwell—Navigation Act of Charles II.—The Maritime Charter of England—Its main provisions recited—Trade with the Dutch prohibited—The Dutch navigation seriously injured—Fresh war with the Dutch, 1664—Its naval results—Action off Harwich, 1665—Dutch Smyrna fleet—Coalition between French and Dutch, 1666—Battle of June 1 and of July 24, 1666—Renewed negotiations for peace, 1667—Dutch fleet burn ships at Chatham, threaten London, and proceed to Portsmouth—Peace concluded—Its effects—The Colonial system—Partial anomalies—Capital created—Economical theories the prelude to final free trade—Eventual separation from the mother country considered—Views of Sir Josiah Child on the Navigation Laws—Relative value of British and Foreign ships, 1666—British clearances, 1688, and value of exports—War with France—Peace of Ryswick, 1697—Trade of the Colonies—African trade—Newfoundland—Usages at the Fishery—Greenland Fishery—Russian trade—Peter the Great—Effect of legislative union with Scotland, 1707—The maritime Commerce of Scotland—Buccaneers in the West Indies—State of British shipping, temp. George I.—South Sea Company, 1710.

Although the English people were jealous of the maritime power of Holland, and had often been annoyed by her arrogance, the two nations were still at peace. England, distracted by civil war, was not then prepared to adopt legislative measures which had for their object the curtailment of the commerce and maritime influence of the Dutch; but her rulers felt that they ought not to further encourage that influence by granting to the ships of their rivals the same advantages in her colonies they had so long possessed in her home ports. The possessions of England were steadily increasing in population and importance, and though she could not have contemplated such a country as America has now become,[175] she saw sufficient in its early progress to justify the resolution to exclude the Dutch from participating in a trade she had herself established, and which bade fair to afford a large amount of valuable employment to her merchant shipping. Consequently, as soon as the English Parliament found time amid the domestic troubles, it enacted that no one in any of the ports of the Plantations of Virginia, Bermuda, “Barbadoes, and other places in America,” should suffer any goods or produce of the manufacture or growth of the plantations to be carried away to foreign ports except in English ships.[176]

The shipowners of England speedily discovered that, under the circumstances in which they were placed, they were now legislating in a direction which, if not the wisest, was the only one that could at the time afford them relief and increase the means of obtaining remunerative employment for their property. Through their influence the policy thus initiated was pursued and strengthened. Four years afterwards they procured the passing of an Act prohibiting all foreign ships whatever from trading with the plantations 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.

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.”[177]

This stringent provision could only be aimed at the carrying trade of the Dutch, who had little or no produce of their own to export, and who for the reasons already mentioned had obtained a virtual monopoly of the carrying trade to many foreign markets. In such acts as these the long stifled feelings of animosity, animated by deep commercial jealousy which had been smouldering for years against the Dutch, at last found expression and relief. So strong indeed had these feelings become, that when the States despatched an embassy to England to solicit a revocation of the navigation laws just passed, it was found necessary to appoint a guard to protect the envoys from the popular resentment openly expressed against them.

England had now asserted the practical right to carry on her own over-sea trade in her own ships, and to obtain as much foreign trade as she could by her own industry and energy, and as this action was practically a defiance of the maritime supremacy of Holland, a struggle was evidently impending which could only be decided by an appeal to arms. But the Dutch amused the English Parliament with negotiations for a treaty, although in point of fact they had nothing to give as an equivalent for any concessions that England might make. In the meanwhile they got together one hundred and fifty vessels, and placing them under the command of Martin Tromp,[178] declared war against her in April 1652. As the desperate and sanguinary struggles which followed are matters of general history, it will be sufficient for our purpose if we recapitulate some only of the leading facts which show the effect of the war upon the merchant shipping of both countries.

The Dutch were at first, if not throughout, by far the heavier sufferers. Within a month of the declaration of war Blake captured one hundred of their herring fleet, together with twelve frigates of their convoy, sinking the thirteenth. He also made efforts to intercept five East Indiamen under the Dutch flag, which had endeavoured to get into port by sailing round Scotland, and he contrived to carry six more frigates into Yarmouth Roads. About the same period Sir George Ayscough, the admiral commanding in the Channel, having thirty-eight ships under him, made an attempt to stop the passage of a fleet of Dutch merchantmen, sailing under the protection of De Ruyter, another distinguished Dutch admiral, but after a furious engagement he was compelled to retire into Plymouth, and to leave a free passage for De Ruyter’s convoy down Channel.

The English, however, again took possession of the Channel, and scarcely a day passed without Dutch prizes being brought into English ports: many of these having made long voyages to distant parts of the world, were on their homeward voyage without apprehension of war. Nor is it surprising that booty so valuable should have whetted the appetite of the English people for war. But happily, on the 5th of April 1654, a treaty of peace was concluded. Cromwell’s enemies complained that in the treaty no mention was made of the sole right of the English to the fishing on their own coast, nor of any annual tribute to be paid by the Dutch for that privilege, which had been the case in the reign of Charles. They were displeased also that he gave up the right of search which Parliament had insisted upon; and, further, that he did not limit the number of Dutch men-of-war to be thereafter employed for the protection of their commerce. Cromwell, however, required in the treaty an admission of the English sovereignty of the seas, and the Dutch consented to strike their flag to the ships of the Commonwealth.[179] We may add that this treaty made no reference to the obnoxious Navigation Act, although this was in all probability the actual cause of the war; as on this point neither Cromwell, the Parliament, nor the nation felt disposed to yield in the smallest degree.

It has been asserted that these laws at first occasioned loud complaints, to the effect “that while our own people (the English) had not shipping enough to import from all parts the goods they wanted, they were, nevertheless, by the Navigation Act debarred from receiving new supplies of merchandise from other nations, who only could, and till then, did import them.”[180] At a later period it was said “No doubt the people were right, the injustice was not seen at first, but the complaints being unheeded, the wrong dropped out of sight.”[181] No sudden revulsion, however, of a long established policy ever takes place without deep complaints from the parties whose monopoly, real or virtual, has been destroyed. But in this instance these alleged complaints had doubtless their origin in the mortification felt by foreign agents in London, whose principals abroad had for centuries enjoyed an undue share of the shipping trade of this country.

During the ten years which followed the passing of the Act of 1651, the Legislature became more and more convinced of the efficacy of these prohibitive laws, and was prepared to render them practically even more stringent. If Charles II. could have reversed any of Cromwell’s legislative measures with advantage or popularity, he and his court would gladly have taken such a step. But Charles and his ministers perceived the advantages which had already accrued from the legislation of the preceding government, and in the first year of his actual reign[182] passed an Act (12 Charles II.) which obtained even from Sir Josiah Child, a liberal and enlightened merchant, the title of ‘The Maritime Charter of England.’[183] This Act may be deemed the complement of the Acts of 1646 and 1651, and its principles continued in force until the year 1849, when, under a totally different state of circumstances, they gave way to a system more liberal and better adapted to preserve that share of the trade of the world, both as manufacturers and carriers of merchandise, which Great Britain had acquired on the transfer of the maritime power of the Dutch to her own people two centuries before.

The Act of Charles apparently modified Cromwell’s law, by making the prohibition of “the importation of foreign commodities, except in British ships, or in ships belonging to the country or place where the goods were produced,” to apply only to the goods of Russia and Turkey and to certain other specified articles, which could not be imported into the United Kingdom except in British ships. But as the enumerated articles comprehended almost all the chief articles of freight, it can scarcely be said that any relaxation of the principles of Cromwell’s law was thus sanctioned. At all events, the supplemental statute of the 14th Charles II. fully carried into effect the declared intentions of the Legislature. By this Act all importation of a long list of enumerated goods, whether from Holland, the Netherlands, or Germany, was prohibited under any circumstances and in any vessels, British or foreign, under the penalty of the seizure and confiscation of the ships and goods.

It would be vain to deny that, whatever prospective results in after times were produced by these laws, the Dutch trade and navigation suffered most seriously from them. The triumphant career of Blake against the Spanish navy in the Mediterranean had previously crippled the maritime power of Spain. The English had acquired a vast territory in North America, and rich islands in the West Indies with a virgin soil. In the East they had surmounted their first difficulties in making settlements, and only required such protection as their own government could supply to become the general carriers of Indian produce to the chief consuming nations of Europe. As it was idle to expect relaxations of their prohibitive systems from France, Spain, or Portugal, the Parliament and the people saw clearly the necessity of maintaining at all hazards the maritime superiority of England, and by such means too as were then within their reach.

The Dutch perceived in these regulations the augury of their maritime downfall, and a fresh war in consequence supervened, the origin of which we need not here discuss; indeed many circumstances concurred to bring about this second rupture. France had endeavoured, by secret intrigues, to embroil the English and the Dutch, in order that when their fleets had been crippled and destroyed, she might step in and acquire an undisputed maritime ascendency. The conduct of the Dutch on the coast of Africa in excluding the African Company from trading to that country had given great umbrage. The King sent a fleet there, doubtless with no friendly intentions. On the other hand the Dutch complained that the English had forbidden the importation of Dutch commodities into England. The two countries were therefore ripe for a fresh war, but the Dutch endeavoured to gain time, so that their fleet of merchantmen might reach home previously to the declaration of war. Charles, however, without waiting for a formal declaration of hostilities, seized one hundred and thirty of their ships, laden with wine and brandy, homeward bound from Bordeaux, conveying them into English ports, where they were condemned as lawful prizes. Though such an act was rightly condemned as unjustifiable by the law of nations, the voice of the people forced the King into the war, and his desire to gain prize-money only accorded too well with the eagerness of the shipowners to plunge into another struggle with their powerful commercial opponents. War was consequently again declared, and a battle off Harwich took place on the 3rd (or 14th N. S.) of June 1665. The Dutch fleet under Cortenaar, Evertz, and Cornelis van Tromp, son of the famous Martin Tromp, was ordered to seek out the English, whose fleet was under the command of the Duke of York, Prince Rupert, and the Earl of Sandwich. It is unnecessary to detail the particulars of this celebrated engagement; suffice it to say that the Dutch lost nineteen ships, burnt and sunk, with about six thousand men. The English lost only four vessels, and about fifteen hundred men; but the Dutch retired, with their remaining ships, to their own coasts, and the Duke of York refrained from pursuing them.[184]

In the meantime the Dutch Smyrna fleet and several of their East Indiamen, not daring to enter the English Channel, took refuge in the port of Bergen in Norway; but a plot was concerted between the kings of England and Denmark to seize these ships, worth several millions, and to divide the spoil. Through mismanagement, however, the scheme was defeated, and the Earl of Sandwich, who had been sent to carry out this intrigue, was so severely handled by the governor of Bergen, that the English ships were compelled to return home. A strong fleet of ninety-three ships, well equipped, under the command of De Ruyter, was then despatched from Holland to convey home the valuable merchant ships from Bergen, but a storm severely damaged this expedition, and ultimately twenty of the ships fell into the hands of the English.

In the following year the affairs of England looked alarming, the States-General having induced the king of France to declare war against England, at the same time subsidising the king of Denmark, to enable him to keep a fleet at sea in the service of the allies. It is irrelevant to our main purpose to describe the tactics of the English and allied fleets; it will be only necessary to remind our readers that the English admirals, Monk and Prince Rupert, engaged the Dutch fleet under De Ruyter and Cornelis Van Tromp on the 1st of June, 1666, off the coast of Flanders, and, after a bloody struggle for four days, the English lost two admirals and twenty-three great ships, besides smaller vessels, six thousand men, and two thousand six hundred prisoners, while the losses of the Dutch amounted to four admirals, six ships, two thousand eight hundred soldiers, and eighty sailors. The latter of course claimed the victory, but the Londoners made bonfires as if they were the conquerors.[185]

The two fleets soon put to sea again, and met on the 24th July, when another formidable struggle took place between the contending parties. The English had a hundred sail, the Dutch had eighty ships of the line and nineteen fireships, the battle being fiercely disputed on each side with unequal and varying success; but, through an error of Van Tromp, the English beat De Ruyter, driving him into port; and afterwards made a descent upon the Dutch coasts, burning a hundred of their merchant ships and two men-of-war destined for convoys. The French fleet appeared in the Channel after the campaign was over, but whether it was in intelligence with the English court, while Louis XIV. only amused the Dutch with a hollow alliance, secretly rejoicing in the destruction of both the English and Dutch navies, and hoping that France might then step in and reap the benefit, certain it is that the Dutch received no real assistance from France.

Renewed efforts were then made to procure peace. Charles, however, procrastinated until he had obtained a fresh and liberal vote of money from Parliament; and when, at length, negotiations were opened at Breda, claimed satisfaction for losses sustained before the treaty of 1662. The Dutch, believing the King to be trifling, and finding that he had not taken precaution to maintain his fleet upon a war footing, despatched De Ruyter to the Thames to force the English to come to terms. The Londoners were greatly alarmed. A strong chain was thrown across the Medway, but the Dutch, with an easterly wind and a strong tide, broke through it, destroyed the fortifications of Sheerness, burnt three large merchant ships, the Matthias, the Unity, and the Charles V., which had been taken from them during the present war, and carried away with them the hull of the Royal Charles, besides burning and damaging several others. After this they pushed up the Medway as far as Upnor Castle, near Chatham, and burnt the Royal Oak, the Royal London, and the Great James before the eyes of the Dukes of York and Albemarle, who had just arrived with some troops. Fearing that the Dutch fleet would sail up to London Bridge, the English sunk thirteen ships at Woolwich, and four at Blackwall, and raised various platforms furnished with artillery to defend the approaches to the city. After committing all the damage he could in the Thames, De Ruyter sailed for Portsmouth with a design to burn the ships in the harbour, but, finding them secured, passed on down Channel and captured several vessels in Torbay. Thence proceeding eastwards, he routed the English off Harwich, and chased a squadron of nineteen men-of-war under Sir Edward Spragge, who was forced to retire into the Thames, thus keeping the English coasts in continual alarm until the Treaty of Peace was signed in the following July.[186]

By the Treaty of Breda each nation retained the goods and moveables they had respectively captured; and, by the nineteenth article, all ships of war as well as merchant vessels belonging to the United Provinces, meeting on British waters any of her ships of war, were required “to strike the flag and lower the sail as had been formerly practised.” Thus terminated this bitter and bloody struggle. If England suffered much, Holland, with a larger capital but fewer permanent resources, suffered still more severely.

Turning to events more within our province, it may be mentioned that, on the authority of Sir Josiah Child, the opponents of the Navigation Laws point out with exultation that, thirty years after these stringent Acts came into operation, “the Dutch were beating us in every quarter.” Such may have been the case in some special branches of commerce, but it is undeniable that, from the date of these laws, the merchant navy of England steadily increased; and that soon afterwards the power over the seas previously claimed by the Dutch was permanently transferred to the English. Whatever may have been the cause of these changes, whether the Navigation Acts, or “the stoppage of trade, insecurity of capital, inherited debts, and taxes on ships” sustained by the Dutch during the war, England’s maritime resources increased, while those of Holland declined; and London became what Amsterdam once was, the chief emporium of the commercial world. Perhaps the resolution of England to depend upon her own people instead of courting foreign aid by legislative measures, combined with the exclusion of foreign shipping from her rapidly-increasing colonial trade, had more to do with these changes than the other combined reasons which the political economists of various ages have assigned.

By what was known as the “Colonial System,” Great Britain secured not merely the exclusive carrying trade of all produce derived from her own plantations, but she exercised the monopoly of supplying them from this side of the Atlantic with such articles as they required or could afford to consume, while sharing in the carrying trade and commerce of those parts of the world to which she had access in common with other maritime states. Many anomalies and some positive self-injuries, however, sprang out of this exclusive system, which of late years have been exposed in all their deformities. But it cannot be disputed, that whatever flagrant evils the exclusive colonial system engendered it was upon the whole one which tended materially to develop the maritime energies of British shipowners; and the rapidity with which the colonies in the West Indian Archipelago and on the continent of America rose to importance both in wealth and population, demonstrates that though not so advantageous as it otherwise might have been, it was certainly not as disastrous to the colonists as partial American historians would have us believe. There may at first have existed a paucity of sufficient capital and a deficiency of English ships to carry on with the fullest advantage the trade thus created; but this want was speedily supplied, and the foundation laid for an exclusive but highly flourishing trade and navigation, which continued in full vigour for more than a century, when the revolt of the North American Colonies formed a new epoch in history, and, by raising up an independent maritime people as direct rivals in the carrying trade of the world, gave a deathblow to a system no longer fitted for the new state of things. During this long interval the theory of trade and navigation became better understood. The French economists,[187] made intelligible and even popular by Adam Smith’s great work, threw a flood of light on the faults prevailing in the most economical distribution of wealth in relation with colonies. But the arguments of theorists would have remained disregarded had the increasing number and influence of the American colonists and the attitude assumed by the Northern maritime powers not rendered it impossible to maintain a system now become obsolete, and the wisdom of the governments of both England and the United States effected a change which has proved not only to be safe, but salutary for all parties interested in this great commercial revolution.

In the middle of the seventeenth century it was indeed unreasonable to expect that England, after her heavy expenditure on settlements all over the globe, would relinquish advantages from which the first adventurers, and ultimately the entire nation, anticipated some return for the amount invested in the plantations and in the ships fitted out for the carrying trade. Even those writers who expatiate on the general unremunerative character of her colonial possessions, with especial reference to Canada, do not consider the foundation of colonies inexpedient, but, on the contrary, admit unreservedly “that colonies have been in their consequences highly advantageous to this, as they have been to most old settled countries in all ages.”[188] Therefore, whatever differences of opinion may prevail respecting the relinquishment of the governmental powers of the mother country over a powerful colony as soon as it is capable of defending itself and of directing its own affairs, every person concurs in the expediency of forming new colonies, their eventual severance from the parent state being only a question of the more or less satisfactory progress they may make towards a position of independence. At the period when the English Navigation Laws were inaugurated in imitation of the successful policy of pre-existing maritime states, there is no doubt that the Dutch[189] naval predominance on the seas rendered the distant possessions of Great Britain not only extremely insecure, but enabled her acute neighbours to carry away part of the prey which had been really acquired by her “bow and spear.”

When these Acts were passed, and for some years afterwards, they created quite as much excitement and discussion as their repeal has caused in our own time. Even Sir Josiah Child,[190] who took the lead among the few merchants of the period who questioned their policy, appears to have had strong protectionist views, one of which may be noticed, as it throws some light upon the cost of shipbuilding at that period. He proposes to impose a customs duty of no less than fifty per cent. on all Eastland commodities, timber, boards, pipe-staves, and salt imported into England and Ireland in any other than English-built ships, or at least in such as were not sailed by English masters and a crew whereof three-fourths were English. His reasons for this highly protectionist proceeding are that “the Danes, Swedes, and Easterlings will certainly, in a few years, carry off the whole trade, by reason of the difference of the cost of building the requisite ships, there and in this country.” Similar statements, we may remark, were the protectionist arguments used in our own day against the repeal of these same laws. “The cost,” he goes on to state, “of building a fly-boat of three hundred tons in those countries would be 1300l. or 1400l., whereas in England she could not be constructed for less than from 2200l. to 2400l., which is so vast a disproportion,” he adds, “that it is impossible for an Englishman to cope with a Dane in that navigation under such discouragement.” The stranger’s duty of five or six pounds per ship each voyage was the only set-off against this alleged disadvantage, and in his opinion the prizes taken in the Dutch war alone enabled us to withstand that competition, Sir Josiah averring that “during the seventeen years the Act of Navigation had been in force, not one single English ship had been built for this, which we may call the Lower Baltic trade.”

Sir Josiah, it will be seen, estimates the cost of constructing an English ship at that time at somewhat under eight pounds per ton, while a vessel could be built by the Danes and Swedes at very little more than one half that price. We must, however, remember that in stating these prices he was arguing in favour of a certain line of policy, and, in doing so, may have made the cost of construction in the Northern ports of Europe considerably less than it actually was. Besides, so much depends upon quality and outfit that a price per ton, unless all the particulars are stated, gives only a vague idea of the actual value.

Another well-known writer of that period, Sir Henry Petty,[191] estimates the value of the whole of the shipping of Europe, old and new, at eight pounds per ton. He also furnishes some valuable information with regard to the extent of the shipping of Europe at the time he wrote. Estimating the whole at 2,000,000 of tons, he apportions to the English 500,000, the Dutch 900,000, the French 100,000, the Hamburgers, with the subjects of Denmark and Sweden, and the town of Dantzic 250,000 tons, and he gives, which seems small, the remaining 250,000 tons as belonging to Spain, Portugal, and Italy. He further states that the Dutch East India Company had then a capital of 3,000,000l., and that goods to the value of that sum were annually exported from Holland into England. The shipping belonging to France was then, it would appear, only one-ninth of that belonging to the Dutch, or one-fifth of that of Great Britain, which, on the authority of Dr. Charles Devonport, had doubled between 1666 and 1688, while her royal navy had in the same time increased from 62,594 to 101,032 tons.[192]

From another return[193] we for the first time ascertain the annual clearances outwards from Great Britain, and the value of the cargoes of the ships. These in 1688 amounted to 190,533 tons of English, and 95,267 tons of foreign vessels, the gross value of these exports being 4,486,087l., showing an annual increase not merely steady but rapid during the previous ten years. War, however, again harassed the people. France, the old enemy of England, now sought to pluck from her the laurels she had won from the Dutch, and to claim a maritime supremacy over both nations. Her naval force had now become so formidable, being augmented by numerous privateers, that it played havoc among the merchant vessels of Great Britain, destroying or capturing nearly the whole Smyrna fleet, consisting of many richly laden vessels, as also two of the English men-of-war which accompanied them.[194]

Such a disaster upon the element where England claimed supremacy was keenly felt, not merely by those persons who were interested in maritime affairs, but by the entire nation, while the direct loss sustained by the English was estimated by the French at one million sterling.[195] The Turkey Company complained that, the Admiralty had neglected its duty; that spies in the pay of the French monarch were allowed facilities for ascertaining the strength and movements of the English fleets, and the destination of any ships worthy of capture. Numerous complaints were also made in Parliament, but, in the sequel, nothing was done to satisfy the nation or to compensate the parties directly interested for the losses they had sustained. The attitude, however, taken soon afterwards by the English fleet in the Mediterranean under the command of Admiral Russell,[196] and the raising of the siege of Barcelona, with the undisputed command which she recovered over the Narrow Seas, restored the prestige of England, and forced the French to keep themselves cooped up in their harbours. But the war had proved disastrous to her commerce and her shipping; the clearances at its close, in 1696, having fallen to 91,767 tons, showing a decrease of no less than 98,766 tons in eight years, while the value of her exports during that period had declined to the extent of 1,356,567l.[197]

The Treaty of Peace of Ryswick, concluded in 1697, brought with it great prosperity, the clearances outwards of British ships averaging in the following three years 393,703 tons annually, while the gross value of produce exported on the average in each of the same years reached 6,709,881, or three times more than it had been in 1696.

At this period the government paid for the hire of transports from the merchant service 716,220l. per annum, on an average of ten years.[198]

From the period of the Revolution in 1688 to the death of Queen Anne, the trade of the plantations had steadily and rapidly increased, employing five hundred sail of vessels, a large proportion of them being engaged in the transport of negroes from the coast of Africa. Though originally a monopoly in the hands of the African Company,[199] private speculation had entered so largely into it that, in 1698, an Act of Parliament gave permission to all the King’s subjects, whether of England or of America, to trade to Africa on payment of a certain per centage to the Company on all goods exported or imported, negro slaves being nevertheless exempted from this contribution. The advocates of free trade considered the exemption a great boon to the colonies, as the competition of the private merchant vessels had greatly reduced the prices of slaves, whereby the British negro colonies had been enabled to undersell their rivals in the general market of the world. This process seems, however, to have had a twofold effect, or to have cut both ways. The keenest partisans for the unbounded liberty of commerce felt no scruple of conscience in depriving the poor Africans, who were only guilty of having black skins and woolly hair, of their liberty, in whatever part of the world they could be found; and on the east coast of Africa, where negroes were cheaper than elsewhere, the competition of the traders of various nations raised the price of human flesh.[200] Although the most hideous cruelties were practised to procure these slaves, the traffic continued to increase and, half a century afterwards, one hundred and fifty vessels were fitted out in one year for the east coast of Africa from the ports of France alone, transporting in the course of that year twenty thousand slaves to the island of St. Domingo.

The French, indeed, during the reign of Louis XIV. had encroached at all points on the English trade, especially on her fisheries at Newfoundland; hence William III. in his declaration of war against that country in 1689, intimated “that whereas not long since the French had been accustomed to take licences from the British governor of Newfoundland for fishing in the seas upon that coast, and to pay tribute for such licences as an acknowledgment of the sole right of the Crown of England to that island, yet of late their encroachments upon his subjects’ trade and fishery there had been more like the invasions of an enemy than of becoming friends who enjoyed the advantages of the said trade only by permission.” But the capture of Nova Scotia at the commencement of this war restored English supremacy in that quarter. The preamble of an Act passed in 1698 for the encouragement of the trade with Newfoundland, declared it to be a beneficial trade to Great Britain, not only in so far as it employed great numbers of ships and seamen in those fisheries, but also in that it procured returns of valuable commodities direct from other countries in exchange for the produce of those fisheries. The prevailing customs at the fisheries were sanctioned expressly in this Act, one of the most important being that the master of any vessel from England who happened first to enter any harbour or creek in the island after the 25th of March should be admiral of the said harbour or creek during the ensuing fishing season, and should see the rules and orders laid down in the Act duly put into execution within the limits of the jurisdiction thus assigned to him. It was also expressly enacted that no subject of any foreign power “shall at any time hereafter take any bait, or use any sort of trade or fishing in Newfoundland, or in any of the adjacent islands;” though this complete exclusion of other rivals was not persevered in.

A few years after the Revolution measures were taken to revive the Greenland fishery; and in 1692 a company, incorporated for carrying it on with a capital of 40,000l., was granted by charter the exclusive possession of the trade for fourteen years. The preamble of their Act describes the previous trade to Greenland as “quite decayed and lost,” the merchants, who had been encouraged to enter into this business, in virtue of the previous Act of 1673, having only imported a small quantity of oil, blubber, and whale fins. They had found other nations enter into the trade with so large a number of ships, that the English fishermen were not enabled to compete with them on their separate interests; indeed the whole trade was then or soon after engrossed by foreigners. At length it was represented to the government that for several years no ships had been despatched from England to Greenland, and that the produce of those fisheries had been wholly bought from foreigners, the prices paid being six times the rates they formerly were; and the memorial added that there were few, if any, English harpooners or English seamen skilled and exercised in whale-catching, so that “the said trade could not be regained nor carried on without foreign harpinierers, or upon individual risks without a joint-stock fund.” As, however, the Greenland fishery did not rally under the protective charter conferred upon the parties subscribing, an additional capital of 42,000l. was raised in 1696, and a new Act obtained, exempting the Company from all duties upon oil, blubber, and whale fins imported during the term of their charter, but before it expired the entire capital was lost, and the Company relinquished the business. Under these circumstances the trade in 1702 was thrown open by Parliament, the Act pronouncing that it had been neglected by the Company, and thus lost to the nation. Twenty years afterwards, in 1721, the number of foreign ships engaged in the Greenland and Davis’s Straits fishery were three hundred and fifty-five, of which Holland sent two hundred and fifty-one ships, Hamburg fifty-five, Bremen twenty-four, Biscay twenty, and Bergen, in Norway, five.

In 1699 the trade with Russia, now daily becoming of greater importance, in consequence of the impulse given to the Russian mercantile navy by Peter the Great, was also practically thrown open by an Act entitling any person to admission to the Russia Company upon payment of an entrance fee of five pounds. It was about this time that the Czar abdicated temporarily his high functions as a powerful barbarian prince, and, assuming a pilot’s dress, repaired to the Dutch city of Saardam, then celebrated for its extensive ship-building, where he purchased a small vessel, at the finishing of which he worked with his own hands. He afterwards worked at every branch of ship-building, associating freely with his fellow artisans. Inscribed on the roll of ships’ carpenters as Peter Michaeloff, he passed among the workmen by the name of Master Peter. After having visited Amsterdam and other towns of Holland, this extraordinary man proceeded to England, where he worked in the dockyard at Deptford in the same industrious, unostentatious manner as he had done in Holland. The Dutch had taught him the mere routine of their method of ship-building; in England he was instructed in the higher branches of the art, and was soon rendered capable of giving instructions to others. It is said that he assisted in building one of the best sailing vessels that had yet been launched. Soon after his return home Russia became a naval power, possessing for the first time a considerable fleet.[201]

Although by the accession of James VI. of Scotland and I. of England these two countries were brought under the same sovereign, they, until the reign of Queen Anne, were for all purposes of trade and legislation foreign and antagonistic states. There was little or no commercial, much less social, intercourse between them; and the advantages enjoyed by either one, and acquired by foreign treaties, were rigorously withheld from the other. The whole amount of trade between the two countries rarely exceeding in value 150,000l. per annum, the amount of shipping employed in it was consequently altogether insignificant; but the Legislative Union in time gave an immense impulse to the commerce of Scotland, and opened to that country the rich fields of the English colonial possessions as well as her home markets. The merchants of Glasgow and Greenock were the first to reap the advantages of the Union, but their commercial operations were confined in a great measure, throughout the whole of the last century, to the West Indies, and to the plantations of British North America, more especially to Virginia, while the insurrection in favour of the son of James II., known as the “Pretender,” very materially retarded the incipient maritime prosperity of that portion of the now thoroughly united kingdom, obliging as it did the English to maintain a considerable fleet cruising off the coasts of Scotland. But when this insurrection was suppressed the trade of Scotland again steadily increased, and may be said to have gone hand-in-hand with England ever since, though interrupted for a time by the more serious rebellion of 1745-6.

Various circumstances tended to strengthen this commercial intercourse, and, not the least among the number, may be mentioned the establishment of the Board of Trade, which, though originally formed under Charles II. in 1668, only became a permanent establishment in 1696, consisting of a royal commission under the style of the “Commissioners for promoting the trade of the Kingdom, and for inspecting and improving the Plantations in America and elsewhere.” This Board afforded resources for enlarging and materially benefiting the trade of the United Kingdom by the publication of its statistical returns, and in numerous other ways, and had the exclusive superintendence of the commerce of the plantations, and indeed of their government until 1786, when a Secretary of State was appointed for the colonies, and a new council for the affairs of trade organised on its present plan.

No sooner had England become distracted at home by the civil war of the first Pretender and by the rupture with Charles XII. of Sweden, than the pirates of Barbary issued from their secret haunts, and greatly interrupted every branch of her maritime commerce. In the West Indies, too, the losses sustained by the ravages of the piratical buccaneers became so extensive that the most serious complaints were preferred against the Admiralty for tolerating the grievance, the result being a proclamation offering a reward of 100l. head-money for every captain, 40l. for a lieutenant down to a gunner, 30l. for an inferior officer, and 20l. for every private captured: more than this, any pirate who delivered up his captain or commander was entitled upon his conviction to a reward of 200l.[202]

War, as we have too frequently seen, is a terrible obstacle to all industrial pursuits, and to no branch of commerce—however much a certain class of shipowners may have realised by having their vessels employed as government transports—is it a greater source of lasting injury than to the mercantile marine. This branch of industry, indeed, suffered not merely by the war itself, but by the hordes of privateers, buccaneers, and pirates which, up to the close of the last century, infested the seas whenever war was declared, thus interrupting legitimate commerce, and plundering wherever they had an opportunity, either by land or sea, too often with little regard whether the property they plundered was that of a friend or a foe. In the early part of the reign of George I. these marauders were almost as daring and as lawless as the pirates had been during the reign of Elizabeth and of the Henrys, and none more so than an Englishman named Roberts, who, in three vessels armed as frigates, the largest mounting forty guns, and commanded by himself, desolated the coasts of Africa and the West India Islands, plundering the ships of his own country with as little remorse as he did those of any other nation.

But while the buccaneers at this period scoured the seas, there were knavish speculators on land who, under the pretence of fostering and developing the commercial and maritime resources of England, were really its greatest enemies. Among the numerous concerns then floated as joint stock companies, no one was more conspicuous or more disastrous than the “South Sea Bubble.” Having for its professed object the trade of the South Seas, yet with no basis for its operations beyond the dishonourable privilege of supplying Spanish America for thirty years with slaves torn from Africa, a very questionable favour granted to Great Britain by the Treaty of Utrecht, this company, in competition with the Bank of England, sought and obtained a monopoly of the South Sea trade on condition that the national floating debt, then about ten millions, should be paid out of its surplus profits!! Though perhaps no wilder scheme was ever propounded, it readily received the sanction of Parliament, and consequently a thousand and one other bubbles were speedily projected. The disastrous results are well known: thousands of families once well to do were irretrievably ruined, and the frenzy with which the people were seized, together with the impulse given to every form of gambling instead of to the steady pursuits of industry, materially aided the convulsion caused by the bursting of these bubbles, thus for many years paralysing commerce in all its branches, and laying prostrate the energies of the country.

Seized for a time with the spirit of insane speculation, the people thought of nothing else, and though in our own day we have witnessed many wild schemes submitted for public support, none have really proved so thoroughly disastrous in their results as those which were then launched. South Sea stock of 100l. sold for 1000l.; the Orkney Fishery stock rose from 25l. to 250l.; the York Buildings stock, whose shares were 10l., reached 260l. The latter, a company erected to cut timber for ship-building and other purposes in Scotland, in spite of a protectionist bounty, proved a ruinous failure. There were besides eleven fishing projects; ten insurance companies; two companies for the remittance of money; four salt companies; two sugar companies; eleven companies for settlements in, or trading to, America; two building companies; thirteen land companies; six oil companies; four harbour and river companies; four companies for supplying London with coal, cattle, and hay, and for paving the streets; six hemp, flax, and linen companies; five companies for carrying on the manufacture of silks and cottons; one for planting mulberry-trees in Chelsea Park, and breeding silkworms;[203] fifteen mining companies; and some sixty more miscellaneous bubbles of the most preposterous character. One undertaking actually obtained subscriptions for an object “which in due time should be revealed!”

But the South Sea Company, the greatest bubble of the lot, having prosecuted some of the rival bubble companies, and obtained a writ of scire facias from the Queen’s Bench, all stocks fell suddenly; and the South Sea scheme itself collapsed in the general ruin which ensued. The price of its stock fell from 1000l. to 175l. in a few weeks. The delusion was at an end, and the English nation awaking from its dreams of boundless wealth to a sense of its degradation, a terrible commercial distress ensued. Parliament stepped in at last with a bill to remedy the mischief which had been done, and which it had itself encouraged. Proofs were given of the deep and fraudulent complicity of the then Chancellor of the Exchequer (Aislabie), as well as of several South Sea directors and other persons of the highest rank at court and in the city. In the sequel, four members of the House of Commons who were South Sea directors were expelled the House; Aislabie was sent to the Tower; Knight, the cashier of the Company, absconded, and the estates of the chief criminals were confiscated.

But amid the numerous wildly speculative concerns then projected and launched, there were others which were sound and legitimate; among these may be mentioned the Royal Exchange Assurance Company, with a capital of 500,000l., and the London Assurance Company, with a subscription list of four times that amount. Each of these have maintained their position to this day, ranking high as marine and fire insurance associations. By their original charters they were empowered to insure ships and merchandise from the dangers and accidents of the sea, and were also authorised to lend money on bottomry bonds. Subsequently they obtained charters for insuring from loss by fire. From the first they have had no exclusive privileges, although they might well have demanded them, for, just before their formation, the losses of private underwriters had been so great that no fewer than one hundred and fifty of them had become insolvent in the previous five years.[204]