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58 The English Statutes in Maryland. [538 nists are worse off than those of France; for ''both are equally governed by arbitrary legislatures, and the sole differ- ence is in the number of hands in which the arbitrary legis- lature is lodged." In France, it is the King alone; in Eng- land, both King and Parliament. There is no difference in the subjection: "in both the subject having no vote or liberty of demurring under either: obey they must, both willing or not willing, or in default, be punished for their disobedience by an armed force, which is as demonstrative a proof of arbi- trary power and vassalage as can be given.'"" Nor is this servitude, he continues, very much abated by their having Assemblies to make laws of their own, for these laws must be consonant to those of the mother country. Moreover, they are grievously oppressed by the Acts of Parliament which bind their trade." 20 Eversfield Volume, pp. 272-5 ft. " Ibid. pp. 273-4. In view of the opinion lately pronounced that. in the eighteenth century the Commercial Legislation of England was not regarded as a grievance, it may be worth while to'give verbatim a para- graph or two in which Eversfield discusses these matters. Com- pare Economics and Politics, pp. 10-12. " Considering that . . . their trade is cramped with high duties and that their staple commodities must be landed in Eng- land before they can be exported to foreign markets, which is putting them to the charge of a double voyage, and that no foreign goods is to be imported among them, but from England, which gives the -English merchants room to exact unreasonable prices for them notwithstanding the drawbacks—that their clothing and necessaries are to be had from England only, and all the ways and stratagems used to discourage the manufacturing of them among themselves.—the privilege of constitutional legislation [in the Assemblies] will be found but a very small abatement of the many vigorous hardships incident [:] and [it] will be found . . . that French Vassals in America enjoy more valuable privileges, at pres- ent, how much surer they rcay be adjudged hereafter, than English ones in the Plantations [:] for [besides the probability that the French willl have such legislatures] . . . they have the greatest encouragements from France for peopling their colonies and carry- ing on their respective manufactures as any people can desire[.] They have lands almost for nothing, paying a mere trifle by way of acknowledgment for quitrent, pay very inconsiderable duties for tlieir commodities exported, have liberty to export them to any European market they please Without being obliged to land them first in France as the English colonies do in England, whereby they save the charge of a second voyage and have the benefit of an |
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Sioussat's The English Statutes in Maryland, 1903
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