Book Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1822 edition. Excerpt: ... NAVIGATION ACT. March 20. 1787. f )N the 5th of March, Mr. Grattan had enquired from the Attorney-general, regarding a bill for which leave had been given on the 23d of February, under the title of a bill for the Improvement of Navigation, whether the bill was to go farther than the mere registry of ships. The Attorney-general said, the intention was to insert a clause in the bill declaratory of the navigation act being in force in this kingdom. Mr. Grattan then said: I find this bill is to enact the navigation law; a law of greatest anxiety to the British minister; a law intended, indeed, to confer equal benefits, and impose equal restraints; but so construed 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, --this 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 in on Wednesday, to be pressed, I suppose, with the usual expedition. The Attorney-general said that the right honourable gentleman laboured under an error in his conception of the matter. Mr. Grattan. If I am in error, I err with authority; I have the authority of as good lawyers as the right honourable fentleman, to say, . that the act of navigation is not the law of reland; if I am in error, I have the authority of the measure of the right honourable gentleman himself, who, justly diffident of his own assertion, calls on Parliament to give it the authority of law, and proposes to enact the navigation law.