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370 THE WHARF CASE.
times extended many miles, including several places as members
of the port; designating one as a port of entry, and another as a
port of delivery. And this is the case in England as well as in
this country, (e)
The public ports are considered as the great gates of the repub-
lic, through which all its foreign intercourse by sea is conducted;
and, consequently, they can only be established; and must, in
some respects, be regulated by that department of the government
to which has been delegated the care of its foreign concerns. In
England the power to establish ports is one of the prerogatives of
the king; (f) and by the charter of Maryland a similar preroga-
tive was given to the Lord Proprietary, which he always claimed
accordingly, (g) But, as all the regulations necessary for the
government of ports could not be established by the exercise of
such a prerogative alone, several attempts were made by the
Genera] Assembly of the province, as well when the government
was in the hands of the Lord Proprietary, as when it was held by
the English monarch, to establish and regulate ports; almost all
of which failed; because, as it would seem, of the nature of the
country, and the peculiar manner in which its trade was then car-
ried on. All the then settlements were within very short distances
of one or other of the navigable branches of the Chesapeake; and
and as tobacco was the chief, or almost only commodity of expor-
tation, which instead of being gathered, as at present, in great
masses, at the principal ports, was, after being packed in hogs-
heads, rolled to the nearest point of a navigable river, to a landing,
or to a rolling house, along rolling roads, as they were then called,
which were opened and established for the purpose, and so shipped
from such places. (A)
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(t) Harg. Law Tracts, 46; The Mayor of Hull v. Horner, Cowp. 107; The
Dock Company v. Browne, 22 Com. Law Rep. 23; 1706, ch. 14; 1707, ch. 16, s. 6
and 10; 1784, ch. 79, s. 32; Acts Cong. 31 July, 1789, ch. 5; 2 March, 1799, ch.
128,—(f) Hale de jure Maris and de Portibus, 36, 51, 54, 60, 73; 1 Blac. Com. 263;
Ball v. Herbert, 3 T. R. 261; Blundell v. Catterall, 7 Com. Law Rep. 91.—
(g) Chart. Maryl, s. 10; 2 Boz. His. Maryl. 574, 623, 633, 644.—(h) 1683, ch. 5;
I60S, ch, 24, s. 8; 1706, ch, 14; 1707, ch. 16; 1745, ch. 14; Chal. Pol. An. 367,
380, From these circumstances, both in Maryland and Virginia, the public ware-
houses for the inspection of tobacco were, before the revolution, often called Roll-
ing Houses— (1763, ch. 18, s. 36 and 37; 3 Virg. Slat. 304; 4 Virg. Stat, 32.)
And even to this day, in Virginia, hogsheads of tobacco are rolled from considerable
distances in the interior to the warehouses in Petersburg and Manchester. It is
said, that in England, originally Custom Houses were instituted as places for the
inspection and safe keeping of merchandise, or as Custody Houses; ( Gilbert Court
of Exchequer, 214;) like those Rolling Houses of our country.
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