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tar, nor turpentine, nor masts, nor yards, nor bow-
sprits, nor coffee, nor pimento, nor cocoa-nuts, nor whale-fins, nor raw silk, nor hides, nor skins, nor pot and pearl ashes, to any place but
Great Britain, not even to
Ireland.
Nor might any foreign ship enter a colonial harbor.
Salt might be imported from any place into
New England, New York,
Pennsylvania, and
Quebec; wines might be imported from the Madeiras and the
Azores, but were to pay a duty in American ports for the
British exchequer; and victuals, horses, and servants might be brought from
Ireland.
In all other respects,
Great Britain was not only the sole market for the products of
America, but the only storehouse for its supplies.
Lest the colonists should multiply their flocks of sheep, and weave their own cloth, they might not use a ship, nor a boat, nor a carriage, nor even a packhorse, to carry wool or any manufacture of which wool forms a part, across the line of one province to another.
They could not land wool from the nearest islands, nor ferry it across a river, nor even ship it to
England.
A British sailor, finding himself in want of clothes in their harbors, might not buy there more than forty shillings' worth of woollens.
Where was there a house in the colonies that did not cherish, and did not possess the
English Bible?
And yet to print that Bible in British America would have been a piracy; and the
Bible, though printed in
German, and in a native savage dialect, was never printed there in English till the land became free.
1 Thomas, History of Printing, i. 304, 305, repeats only what he heard.
Himself a collector, he does not profess ever to have seen a copy of the alleged American edition the
English Bible.
Search has repeatedly been made for a copy, and always without success.
Six or eight hundred Bibles in quarto could of hardly have been printed, bound,