In the
subsequent years of the same reign, other statutes were enacted to
re-enforce these statutes, and other rules prescribed to secure a
compliance with these rules. In this manner was the trade to and from
the Colonies restricted, almost to the exclusive advantage of the parent
country. But laws, which rendered the interest of a whole people
subordinate to that of another people, were not likely to execute
themselves, nor was it easy to find many on the spot, who could be
depended upon for carrying them into execution. In fact, these laws were
more or less evaded or resisted, in all the Colonies. To enforce them
was the constant endeavor of the government at home; to prevent or elude
their operation, the perpetual object here. "The laws of navigation,"
says a living British writer, "were nowhere so openly disobeyed and
contemned as in New England." "The people of Massachusetts Bay," he
adds, "were from the first disposed to act as if independent of the
mother country, and having a governor and magistrates of their own
choice, it was difficult to enforce any regulation which came from the
English Parliament, adverse to their interests." To provide more
effectually for the execution of these laws, we know that courts of
admiralty were afterwards established by the crown, with power to try
revenue causes, as questions of admiralty, upon the construction given
by the crown lawyers to an act of Parliament; a great departure from the
ordinary principles of English jurisprudence, but which has been
maintained, nevertheless, by the force of habit and precedent, and is
adopted in our own existing systems of government.
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