ayable out of the customs. This measure, however,
was not of such importance to the nation, as the act which they passed
for encouraging the importation of pig and bar iron from the British
colonies in North America. Every well-wisher to his country reflected
with concern on the nature of the British trade with Sweden, from which
kingdom the subjects of his Britannic majesty imported more iron and
steel than all the other countries in Europe. For this article they paid
a very great balance in ready money, which the Swedes again expended
in purchasing from the French, and other mercantile powers, those
necessaries and superfluities with which they might have been as cheaply
furnished by Great Britain. In the meantime, the English colonies in
America were restricted by severe duties from making advantage of their
own produce, in exchanging their iron for such commodities as they
were under the necessity of procuring from their mother country. Such
restrictions was not only a cruel grievance upon our own settlements,
but also attended with manifest prejudice to the interest of Great
Britain, annually drained of great sums in favour of an ungrateful
nation, from which no part of them returned; whereas the iron
imported from America must of necessity come in exchange for our own
manufactures. The commons having appointed a day for taking this affair
into consideration, carefully examined into the state of the British
commerce carried on with Sweden, as well as into the accounts of iron
imported from the plantations of America; and a committee of the whole
house having resolved, that the duties on American pig and bar iron
should be removed, a bill [322] _[See note 2 R, at the end of this
Vol.]_ was brought in for that purpose, containing a clause, however, to
prevent his majesty's subjects from making steel, and establishing mills
for slitting and rolling iron within the British colonies of America:
this precaution being taken, that the colonists might not interfere with
the manufactures of their mother country.

ERECTION OF THE BRITISH HERRING FISHERY.

The next commercial improvement of which we shall take notice, was
the bill for the encouragement of the British white herring and
cod fisheries. This was likewise the result of mature deliberation,
importing, that a bounty of thirty shillings per ton should be granted,
and paid out of the customs, to all new vessels from twenty to fourscore
tons burden, which should