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Harper's Encyclopedia of United States History (ed. Benson Lossing), Navigation acts. (search)
stablished throughout the colonies in 1697, with power to try admiralty and revenue cases without a jury—the model of our existing United States district courts. These were strongly resisted, especially in the chartered colonies. The privy council maintained the doctrine that nothing prevented the King from establishing an admiralty jurisdiction within every dominion of the crown, chartered or not. The British navy was employed to enforce the Navigation Act in the colonies in 1763. Admiral Colville, commanding the naval forces on the American coast from the St. Lawrence to the capes of Florida, became the head of a new corps of revenue officers. Each captain of his squadron was furnished with a customhouse commission and instructions from the lords of the admiralty, and was empowered to enter harbors, after taking the usual oaths to perform the duties of custom-house officers, and to seize persons suspected of being engaged in illicit trade. This measure aroused the most violent