NAVIGATION ACT. ON the 5th of March, 1787, Mr. Grattan desired to be informed what was meant by a Bill, for which leave had been given the 23d of last February, under the title of "A Bill for the improvement of Navigation," and whether that Bill was to go farther than the registry of ships.The Attorney-General (Mr. Fitzgibbon) replied, that the intent was to insert a clause in the Bill, declaratory of its being in force in this kingdom. "Then," said Mr. Grattan" I find this Bill is to enact the Navigation Law, a law of greatest anxiety to the British Minister, a law intended to confer equal benefits and impose equal restraints, but so considered by Britain, as to confer benefits on herself and exclude Ireland. This was a principle of the Propositions, and a very old complaint-England sent plantation goods to Ireland, and refused to receive them from us, under colour and construction of one and the same law-the act of Navigation.-This law, it seems now, gentlemen begin to suspect is not valid in Ireland, and it is now proposed by them to be enacted here, subject to the hostile construction; and it is to be brought on, on Wednesday, to be passed, I suppose, with the usual expedition." - On the 20th March, the Attorney-General's new Bill was debated; on which occasion, Mr. Grattan moved an amendment, which, in his opinion, went completely and effectually to prevent any future misconstruction of the Navigation Act, whose original principle and object was equality of advantage to every part of the British empire. This celebrated act (which Blackstone describes as the most beneficial statute for the trade and commerce of England) was first framed in the year of Cromwell, 1650, with a narrow partial view-being intended to mortify our Sugar Islands, which were disaffected to the Parliament, and still held out for Charles the 2d, by stopping the gainful trades which they then carried on with the Dutch; and, at the same time, to clip the wings of those our opulent and aspiring neighbours-this act prohibited all ships of foreign nations from trading with any English plantations, without license from the Council of State. In 1651, the prohibition was extended also to the mother country, and no goods were to be suffered to be imported into England, or any of its dependencies, in any other than English bottoms, or in the ships of that European nation, of which the merchandize imported was the genuine growth or manufacture; at the restoration, the former provisions were continued, by statute 12 of Charles the 2d, c. 18, with this very material improvement, that the master and threefourths of the mariners shall also be English subjects. This Act of Navigation, so justly considered by Englishmen as the great cause of their commercial ascendancy over the rest of mankind, or as Sir Joseph Child describes it," The Charta Maritima of England," the creator and preserver of that Navy, which rides triumphant over every sea, and dictates British law in the remotest corners of the globe, had not yet become the law of Ireland. The jealousy which originally dictated this celebrated Act against the enemies of England, was directed against Ireland with the same selfish spirit; and the enlightened consideration of extending to the latter, all the advantages which flowed from this unprecedented monopoly to England, never occurred to those Ministers, whose object should have been a community of interest and a free interchange of benefit with every part of the British Empire.-This Act of Navigation was a law of policy and power, rather than of commerce;—a martial policy was the object of those who gave birth to it; and it appears, from an inspection of the act, that its framers intended its operation should be general throughout the British Empire. The broad and expanded views of Cromwell were defeated by the narrow and contemptible cunning of commercial avarice ;-for though the Act of the 12th of Charles II. which is called the Act of Navigation, recognizes the principle of universal operation throughout the Empire, yet, in three years after that period, the miserable policy of England converted it into a law of commercial restriction, by forbiding the direct import of the colony trade with Ireland. Thus, the liberal construction, which, from the words of the Act, and the circumstances under which it was enacted, underwent various alterations in many subsequent statutes. By the Navigation Act-plantation goods were exportable only from the plantations to England, Ireland, Wales, and Berwick; but by a series of succeeding laws, (the 15th and 22d of Charles II.-the 7th and 8th of William, and 4th of George II.) all plantation goods were prohibited to be landed, from the plantations in Ireland, except a few articles, which escaped the enumeration in the Act of George II-Thus counteracting the original comprehensive inten tion of the Act of Navigation.-To put an end to the possibility of any future misconstruction of this famous statute, which Ireland was about to adopt as the law of the land, Mr. Grattan proposed the following amendment, which goes to secure all the benefits of the act, on the principle of Irish equality. "And whereas it is the meaning and intention of the said Act, passed in England, in the 12th of King Charles II. to impose the same restraints, and confer equal benefits, on his Majesty's subjects in England and in Ireland, and that both kingdoms shall be affected in the same manner." To this amendment it was objected by Ministers, that the act of Charles II. the liberality of which was so much relied upon by Mr. Grattan, had no reference whatever to the transportation of Collonial goods between England and Ireland; that the Act of Customs, which was in force more than a century, regulated the trade-that it was impossible to force England to adopt a construction of the Navigation Act, different from that which we had hitherto obtained;--that the Act, as it stood, without the amendment, was a source of infinite advantage to Ireland; it gave to the latter a monopoly in favour of her shipping-it gave her admission into the |