The Bounty System. 77 



he fears that these clauses were " thrust in by the private views 

 of some iron-masters who had not consideration enough to 

 think of the true interest of their country." Whatever the ori- 

 gin of the clauses, the result of passing the act would have been, 

 as the author of "A Letter to a Member of Parliament" put it, 

 that no smith in the plantation could have made so much as a 

 bolt, spike or nail; the iron works and ship-building would 

 have been ruined. There was some opposition, also, to the im- 

 portation of timber from the colonies. "The fondness of some 

 people to keep in the old track," wrote Gee,^ "has caused them 

 to send their emissaries about and fill gentlemen with the notion 

 that if we were supplied with boards and timber from America, 

 our Royal Navy would be deprived of a sufficient supply of 

 masts ; which pretenses have no shadow of reason in them, for 

 it is well known that the whole supply of the Royal Navy rarely 

 exceeds the number of 300 trees in a year for masts. Now what 

 are 300 trees out of a forest 14 to 15 miles long and 300 to 400 

 miles broad?" There was timber enough in Maine, New 

 Hampshire and Massachusetts to supply all Europe; and as to 

 the objections urged against supplying other nations with ma- 

 terials for their navies, Mr. Gee very sensibly argued that, if 

 England did not supply them, the Dutch would sell them East 

 Country oak. Besides, there was no more profitable mer- 

 chandise than timber, which on account of its bulk employed 

 the greatest number of ships and sailors with very small ex- 

 penditure of national capital. It was this sort of trade which 

 had bred Denmark and Norway so many sailors and enabled 

 them to fit out their navies. The clauses restraining manufac- 

 ture killed the bill of 1719, for "the better-disposed" urged that 

 the measure be dropped for that session.- 



But the arguments of Mr. Gee prevailed a year or two later, 

 and in 1722 another general naval stores act was passed,^ which 

 v/as a sort of revised version of the preceding acts, correcting 



iR, T. Plants. Gen., L: 24. 



^"Letter to a Member of Parliament;" and Macpherson's "Annals 

 of Commerce," Vol. Ill, page 72. 

 ■■'8 Geo. I, c. 12. 



