ernal taxation and internal policy,
and a very general, if not universal opinion, that they were
constitutionally entitled to it, and as general a determination to
maintain and defend it. But there never existed a desire of independence
of the Crown, or of general regulations of commerce for the equal and
impartial benefit of all parts of the empire." "If any man," said the
same great statesman, "wishes to investigate thoroughly the causes,
feelings and principles of the Revolution, he must study this Act of
Navigation, and the Acts of Trade, as a philosopher, a politician and a
philanthropist."

When the Act of Navigation was originally passed, in the Cromwell period,
it is probable that the colonies were not seriously in the minds of the
people and of Parliament. The act was aimed, as we have before stated, at
the Dutch, and was effective for the purposes intended; but within the
decade that elapsed before its re-enactment under the Restoration, the
colonial trade had grown with a vigor that aroused jealousy and
uneasiness at home, and the Act of Navigation was soon followed, in 1663,
by the first of the Acts of Trade, which provided that no supplies should
be imported into any colony, except what had been actually shipped in an
English port, and carried directly thence to the importing colony. This
cut the colonies off from direct trade with any foreign country, and made
England the depot for all necessaries or luxuries which the colonies
desired, and which they could not obtain in America. Nine years later, in
1672, followed another act "for the better securing the plantation
trade," which recited that the colonists had, contrary to the express
letter of the aforesaid laws, brought into diverse parts of Europe great
quantities of their growth, productions and manufactures, sugar, tobacco,
cotton, wool and dye woods being particularly enumerated in the list, and
that the trade and navigation in those commodities from one plantation to
another had been greatly increased, and provided that all colonial
commodities should either be shipped to England or Wales before being
imported into another colony, or that a customs duty should be paid on
such commodities equivalent to the cost of conveying the same to England,
and thence to the colony for which they were destined. For instance, if a
merchant in Rhode Island desired to sell some product of the colony of
Massachusetts in New York, and to forward the same by a vessel, e