Editing Navigation Acts (section)

===Navigation Act 1696===
{{Infobox UK legislation
| short_title           = Plantation Trade Act 1695
| type                  = Act
| parliament            = Parliament of England
| long_title            = An Act for preventing Frauds and regulating Abuses in the Plantation Trade
| year                  = 1696
| citation              = [[7 & 8 Will. 3]]. c. 22
| territorial_extent    = [[England and Wales]]
| royal_assent          = 10 April 1696
| commencement          = 25 March 1698{{efn|Section 1.}}
| expiry_date           =
| repeal_date           = 15 July 1867
| amends                = 
| replaces              = 
| amendments            = [[Customs Law Repeal Act 1825]] 
| repealing_legislation = [[Statute Law Revision Act 1867]]
| related_legislation   = 
| status                = Repealed
| original_text         = https://www.british-history.ac.uk/statutes-realm/vol7/pp103-107
}}

The so-called '''Navigation Act 1696''' ([[7 & 8 Will. 3]]. c. 22), long-titled ''An Act for preventing Frauds and regulating Abuses in the Plantation Trade'', became effective over in the next few years, due to its far reaching provisions; the act is short-titled the Plantation Trade Act 1695. It contains new restrictions on colonial trade, and several different administrative provisions to strengthen enforcement and consolidate the earlier acts.<ref>.Reeves 1792, [https://books.google.com/books?id=_5taAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA81 pp.&nbsp;81–91]</ref>

In tightening the wording of the 1660 act, and after noting the daily "great abuses [being] committed ... by the artifice and cunning of ill disposed persons", this act now required that no goods or merchandise could be imported, exported, or carried between English possessions in Africa, Asia and America, or shipped to England, Wales, or Berwick upon Tweed, except in "what is or shall bee of the Built of England or of the Built of Ireland or the said Colonies or Plantations and wholly owned by the People thereof ... and navigated with the Masters and Three-Fourths of the Mariners of the said Places onely". To enforce this change, the act required the registration of all ships and owners, including an oath that they have no foreign owners, before the ship would be considered English-built. Exceptions were introduced for foreign-built ships taken as [[prize (law)|prize]], or those employed by the navy for importing [[Naval stores#Colonial North America|naval stores]] from the plantations. The deadline for the registration of ships was extended by the Registering of Ships Act 1697 (9 Will 3 c. 42)<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=pFYMAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA385 ''An Act for enlarging the Time for Registering of Ships pursuant to the act for preventing Frauds and regulating Abuses in the Plantation Trade.''] A collection of the public general statutes passed in the ... year of the reign of Her Majesty Queen Victoria, p.&nbsp;385 (1867)</ref> In a significant tightening of the navigation enforcement system, section 6 of the act establishes that violations are to be tried ''in any of His Majesties Courts att Westminster or [in the Kingdome of Ireland or in the Court of Admiralty held in His Majesties Plantations respectively where such Offence shall bee committed att the Pleasure of the Officer or Informer or in any other Plantation belonging to any Subject of England]''...<ref>Brackets annexed to the original act in a separate schedule.</ref> Revenue generated was to be split in thirds between the King, the Governor, and the one who informed and sued.

Previously, most of the customs collection and enforcement in the colonies was performed by the governor or his appointees, commonly known as the "naval officer," but evasion, corruption and indifference were common. The 1696 act now required all current governors and officers to take an oath that all and every clause contained in the act be "punctually and bona fide observed according to the true intent and meaning". Governors nominated in the future were required to take this oath before assuming office. To tighten compliance among colonial customs officials, the act required that all current and future officers give a security bond to the Commissioners of the Customs in England to undertake the "true and faithfull performance of their duty". Additionally, the act gave colonial customs officers the same power and authority as of customs officers in England; these included the ability to board and search ships and warehouses, load and unload cargoes, and seize those imported or exported goods prohibited or those for which duties should have been paid under the acts. Commissioners of the treasury and of the customs in England would now appoint the colonial customs officials. Due to colonial "doubts or misconstructions" concerning the bond required under the 1660 act, the 1696 act now mandated that no enumerated goods could be loaded or shipped until the required bond was obtained.<ref>Hugh Edward Egerton, A short history of British colonial policy (1897), [https://archive.org/stream/ashorthistorybr01egergoog#page/n134/mode/2up p.&nbsp;114]</ref> The act was followed by a special instruction about the oaths and [[Proprietary colony|proprietary governors]] who weren't directly under royal control to post a bond to comply; this was considered by the Board of Trade and issued on 26 May 1697.<ref>Reeves 1792, p.&nbsp;90</ref>

Since the colonies previously had passed much of their own legislation and appointments, the act included several sections to tighten English control over the colonies generally. The act mandated that all colonial positions of trust in the courts or related to the treasury must be native born subjects of England, Ireland or the colonies. It also enacted that all laws, bylaws, usages or customs in current or future use in the plantations, which are found to be repugnant to the navigation acts in any way, are to be declared illegal, null and void. The act additionally declared that all persons or their heirs claiming any right or property "in any Islands or Tracts of Land upon the Continent of America by Charter or Letters Patent shall not in the future alienate, sell or dispose of any of the Islands, Tracts of Land, or Proprieties other than to the Natural Born Subjects of England, Ireland, Dominion of Wales or Town of Berwick upon Tweed without the License and Consent of His Majesty". Colonial-born subjects were not mentioned.  Such a sale must be signified by a prior Order in Council.{{citation needed|date=July 2020}}

With this act the government did start to institute admiralty courts and staff them in more and new places; this established "a more general obedience to the acts of Trade and Navigation." [[John Reeves (activist)|John Reeves]], who wrote the handbook for the Board of Trade,<ref>Dudley Odell McGovney, [https://www.jstor.org/stable/1834096  The Navigation Acts as Applied to European Trade], The American Historical Review Vol. 9, No. 4 (Jul., 1904), pp.&nbsp;725–734</ref> considered the 1696 act to be the last major navigation act, with relatively minor subsequent acts. The system established by this act, and upon previous acts, was where the Navigation Acts still stood in 1792,<ref>Reeves 1792, pp.&nbsp;89–91</ref> though there would be major policy changes followed by their reversals in the intervening years.