THE CRISIS AND THE CONVOYS, 1656-1688 8 1 



1663, were passed, two duties were assigned to the convoys — 

 self-defence and fiscal supervision, and it was assumed that 

 the latter would pay for the former duty. The Acts of 165 1 

 laid down a rule, which limited the carrying trade between 

 England and her Colonies to British ships, except in cases 

 which do not concern us ; but the Dutch, against whom the 

 Act was aimed, hardly ever traded, and never fished, near 

 Newfoundland, so that the rule concerns us almost as little 

 as its exception. By the Acts of 1660 and 1663 no colonial 

 sugar or tobacco might be sent to foreign countries, and no 

 European goods, except wine from the Azores and Madeira, 

 and except salt, might be sent from foreign countries to our 

 colonies (1663), but each of these forbidden products must be 

 sent direct from the place, where it was produced, to 'England, 

 Wales, or Berwick ' (1663). These measures vitally affected 

 Newfoundland. New Englanders, amongst other necessaries 

 of life,* brought West-Indian sugar, molasses, and rum, and 

 Virginian tobacco, while ships from France, Spain, and 

 Portugal brought brandy to Newfoundland; and if New- 

 foundlanders bought this sugar, tobacco, or brandy, they 

 sinned against the Navigation Acts. Nor was this all. 

 Newfoundlanders liked sugar only less than they liked salt, 

 wallowed in rum, molasses, and brandy, and smoked tobacco 

 from morning to night, but a man must be very simple who 

 supposed that all these commodities were bought by New- 

 foundlanders with fish or money. Indeed, there is over- 

 whelming evidence that most of the colonial sugar, molasses, 

 rum, and tobacco went through Newfoundland to the 

 continental Europeans, and that most of the European 

 drinks went through Newfoundland to the American colonists. 

 Direct traffic between a colony and a fojeign country was 

 regarded as the deadliest of all deadly sins by the statesman 

 of that time. Moreover, the sinners sinned in the light of 



* J. Downing says, * Bread, peas, flour, beef, pork, butter, tar, boards, 

 tobacco, black sugar, and molasses.' Egerton MSS. 2395, fol. 561. 



VOL. V. PT. IV a 



