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[266] tar, nor turpentine, nor masts, nor yards, nor bow-
chap. XII.} 1765 May.
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,

1 and sold in Boston, then a small town, undiscovered. Nor would they all have disappeared. The most complete catalogues of English Bibles enumerate no one with the imprint, which was said to have been copied. Till a copy of the pretended American edition is produced, no credit can be given to the second-hand story, which is more over at variance with the statement of Dr. Chauncy, the minister of the first church of Boston, at the time of the pretended publication.

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