STATEMENT exhibiting the Articles Imported during the Year ending on the 30th of June, 1844, the Duty on which exceeds 35 per cent, on the Wholesale Market Value of such Articles; prepared in conformity to the 27th Section of the Act of the 30th of August, 1842.

NAVIGATION AND TRADE BETWEEN THE UNITED STATES AND THE UNITED KINGDOM.

THE commercial intercourse between the United Kingdom and the United States of America, is confined to the vessels of the respective countries, including the colonial possessions. This is much upon the same principle as before the independence of the Anglo-American colonies: excepting that the British crown subjected the colonial carrying trade with foreign countries to restrictions that were palpably unwise and unjust, though strictly in the narrow spirit of the Navigation act. Since the revolution, the ships of the United States trade to all the countries in the world. (See Commercial Legislation of England and the United States hereafter.)

VOL. II.

6 A

The early details of the trade between Great Britain and her colonial possessions were by no means attended to. Some accounts of entrances and clearances, and notices of the imports, were kept by the customs department, and from these the following tables have been compiled.

The accounts of the tonnage employed are mixed up with that engaged in the North American fisheries, and in the circuitous trade with the West Indies. It comprised a great share of the whole British navigation beyond the seas.

From the date of first passing the navigation law in 1660, in which act the exclusive restrictions to be observed in the trade and navigation of the plantations in America is declared, we have but scanty information respecting the commerce of the North American colonies until 1670, when we find they supplied the sugar plantations with cattle, hogs, flour, timber, slaves, and other lumber; and that "in time of dearth," the plantations of New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, supplied even Britain and Ireland with corn.

In 1703, a law was passed to encourage the growth and importation of naval stores from the North American colonies-and an active trade appears to have been carried on between England and these plantations, and between the latter and the West Indies. A very profitable trade from the North American plantations was carried on with the foreign West Indies, which was most unwisely attempted to be stopped, by British West Indian interests obtaining a British act of parliament, framed in 1733, imposing nearly prohibitive restrictions on that trade, although the proceeds and profits of which were nearly all remitted to England in payment for manufactures. The value of exports from Great Britain to North America, on an average of the three first years of King William's reign, is stated by Chalmers, at 395,6197. The imports at 339,138/.; the population in 1715, that is 130 years ago, at 375,750 whites; 58,850 negroes. Total 434,600. That trade was paralysed for some time, but not suppressed. It was beyond the power of mere acts of parliament to annihilate so profitable a commerce: especially that carried on by British merchants, from England, through the North American colonies, to the French and other foreign West Indies, until 1665, when Mr. Grenville, a man of great integrity, but of contracted mind, and a most blundering commercial legislator, converted the gallant commanders of his majesty's ships of war, on the American and West India, as well as on the British coasts, into sworn revenue officers for the enforcement of restrictive navigation.

The profitable trade from the North American plantations in supplying the French, Spanish, and Danish West Indies, with British manufactures and colonial provisions and stores, was consequently, during the following year, almost annihilated by the wicked interference of Mr. Grenville. Grievous, indeed, was the consequent infliction upon British trade and navigation-and unfortunate the effects finally caused by the just, but unredressed, complaints of the North American colonists.* Their grievances were only attended to by an attempt to * Macgregor's British America.