rice, and of all salt provisions, has, in the ordinary
state of the law, been prohibited.
The non-enumerated commodities could
originally be exported to all parts of the world.
Lumber and rice having been once put into
the enumeration, when they were afterwards
taken out of it, were confined, as to the European
market, to the countries that lie south
of Cape Finisterre. By the 6th of George
III. c. 52, all non-enumerated commodities
were subjected to the like restriction. The
parts of Europe which lie south of Cape Finisterre
are not manufacturing countries, and
we are less jealous of the colony ships carrying
home from them any manufactures which
could interfere with our own.
The enumerated commodities are of two
sorts; first, such as are either the peculiar
produce of America, or as cannot be produced,
or at least are not produced in the mother
country. Of this kind are molasses, coffee,
cocoa-nuts, tobacco, pimento, ginger, whale-fins,
raw silk, cotton, wool, beaver, and other
peltry of America, indigo, fustick, and other
dyeing woods; secondly, such as are not the
peculiar produce of America, but which are,
and may be produced in the mother country,
though not in such quantities as to supply the
greater part of her demand, which is principally
supplied from foreign countries. Of
this kind are all naval stores, masts, yards,
and bowsprits, tar, pitch, and turpentine, pig
and bar iron, copper ore, hides and skins, pot
and pearl ashes. The largest importation of
commodities of the first kind could not discourage
the growth, or interfere with the sale,
of any part of the produce of the mother
country. By confining them to the home market,
our merchants, it was expected, would
not only be enabled to buy them cheaper in
the plantations, and consequently to sell them
with a better profit at home, but to establish
between the plantations and foreign countries
an advantageous carrying trade, of which
Great Britain was necessarily to be the centre
or emporium, as the European country into
which those commodities were first to be imported.
The importation of commodities of
the second kind might be so managed too, it
was supposed, as to interfere, not with the
sale of those of the same kind which were produced
at home, but with that of those which
were imported from foreign countries; because,
by means of proper duties, they might be rendered
always somewhat dearer than the former,
and yet a good deal cheaper than the latter.
By confining such commodities to the
home market, therefore, it was proposed to
discourage the produce, not of Great Britain,
but of some foreign countries with which the
balance of trade was believed to be unfavourable
to Great Britain.
The prohibition of exporting from the colonies
to any other country but Great Britain,
masts, yards, and bowsprits, tar, pitch, and
turpentine, naturally tended to lower the price
of timber in the colonies, and consequently to
increase the expense of clearing their lands,
the principal obstacle to their improvement.
But about the beginning of the present century,
in 1703, the pitch and tar company of
Sweden endeavoured to raise the price of their
commodities to Great Britain, by prohibiting
their exportation, except in their own ships,
at their own price, and in such quantities as
they thought proper. In order to counteract
this notable piece of mercantile policy, and to
render herself as much as possible independent,
not only of Sweden, but of all the other
northern powers, Great Britain gave a bounty
upon the importation of naval stores from
America; and the effect of this bounty was
to raise the price of timber in America much
more than the confinement to the home market
could lower it; and as both regulations
were enacted at the same time, their joint effect
was rather to encourage than to discourage
the clearing of land in America.
Though pig and bar iron, too, have been
put among the enumerated commodities, yet
as, when imported from America, they are
exempted from considerable duties to which
they are subject when imported from any other
country, the one part of the regulation contributes
more to encourage the erection of furnaces
in America than the other to discourage
it. There is no manufacture which occasions
so great a consumption of wood as a furnace,
or which can contribute so much to the clearing
of a country overgrown with it.
The tendency of some of these regulations
to raise the value of timber in America, and
thereby to facilitate the clearing of the land,
was neither, perhaps, intended nor understood
by the legislature. Though their beneficial
effects, however, have been in this respect accidental,
they have not upon that account been
less real.
The most perfect freedom of trade is permitted
between the British colonies of America
and the West Indies, both in the enumerated
and in the non-enumerated commodities.
Those colonies are now become so populous
and thriving, that each of them finds in some
of the others a great and extensive market
for every part of its produce. All of them
taken together, they make a great internal
market for the produce of one another.
The liberality of England, however, towards
the trade of her colonies, has been confined
chiefly to what concerns the market for their
produce, either in its rude state, or in what
may be called the very first stage of manufacture.
The more advanced or more refined
manufactures, even of the colony produce, the
merchants and manufacturers of Great Britain
chuse to reserve to themselves, and have
prevailed upon the legislature to prevent their