Benns: British West India Carrying-Trade 65 
Consequently as soon as the navigation act went into opera- 
tion, a trade, previously unknown, sprang up between Ber- 
muda and the United States, partly in American vessels and 
partly in British vessels. In this way the trade, which the 
American Government had intended to suppress, continued to 
be carried on indirectly thru Bermuda, the longest part of the 
transit being performed by British vessels, and even a part 
of the trade between the United States and Bermuda being 
carried on in British ships.^^ 
But this was not all. As soon as it had become evident, 
early in 1818, that the American Government was about to 
enact a stricter measure of retaliation, and even before its ac- 
tual adoption, the British Government had moved to counter- 
act its effects by the adoption of two new commercial 
regulations. The first was a free port act, passed May 8, 
1818, by which the King in Council was authorized to desig- 
nate ports in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia as free ports 
for a limited time.^^ Into these free ports the following arti- 
cles might be imported : 
scantling, plank, staves, heading-boards, shingles, hoops, horses, neat 
cattle, sheep, hogs, poultry, or live stock of any sort, bread, biscuit, flour, 
peas, beans, potatoes, wheat, rice, oats, barley, or grain of any sort, 
pitch, tar, turpentine, fruits, seeds, and tobacco. 
The importation of these articles might be in either British 
or foreign ships, but in the latter only in case the articles were 
the growth of the country to which the ships belonged. These 
goods were permitted in turn to be re-exported to the United 
Kingdom or its possessions, but in British ships only.^^ On 
the other hand, there might be exported from these free ports 
gypsum, grindstones, or other produce or manufacture of the said prov- 
inces; also any produce or manufacture of the United Kingdom, or of 
the British West Indies or any goods whatever which shall have been 
legally imported into the said provinces. 
Here again the export was permitted in either British or for- 
eign ships, but in foreign ships only in case they belonged to 
the country to which the articles were being exported.^^ 
The purpose of the act was obvious. The articles which 
might be imported were precisely those needed, not in the 
Report of Com. of Commerce and Manufacture, Am. State Papers, Commerce and 
Navigation, II, 400. 
Annual Register, 1818, LX, Appendix, 352. 
Boston Daily Advertiser, July 2, 1818. 
« Ibid. 
5—23811 
