commodities in the same or other vessels after the expiration of a year.[1]
When Charles was executed, the act was denounced as treason by the people of Virginia and Barbadoes, and the son of that unfortunate monarch was proclaimed as their lawful sovereign. This bold conduct aroused the resentment of Parliament, which in retaliation adopted in October, 1650, an ordinance depriving them of all independent right to sell their commodities in the markets of any country whatever.[2] The only modification of this severe measure was, that the Council of State was left at liberty to grant special licenses to English or foreign merchants and shipmasters to hold commercial relations with the inhabitants of the two Colonies.[3] This ordinance, it will be observed, was adopted, not to confine the transportation of their products to English vessels, but to starve the planters into submission, by closing all the channels of exchange except so far as the English authorities permitted them to be opened. It was a punitive, and not a commercial measure. Twelve months later the first of the celebrated Acts of Navigation was passed, which provided that all goods of the growth or manufacture of Asia, America, or Africa, should be introduced into England only in ships of which the owner, master, and the greater number of mariners were English subjects; and that all foreign products brought into English ports should be conveyed directly thither from the place of growth or manufacture. The practical working of this Act was calculated to advance the interests of English shipping, but it had its origin in part in the desire to cripple the Dutch, against whom the Government was at the time incensed on account of the recent murder
