%103. Lords of Trade and Plantations.%--That the King should give personal attention to all the details of government in his colonies in America, was not to be expected. In 1696, therefore, a body called the Lords of the Board of Trade and Plantations was commissioned by the King to do this work for him. These Lords of Trade corresponded with the governors, made recommendations, bade them carry out this or that policy, veto this or that class of laws, examined all the laws sent over by the legislatures, and advised the King as to which should be disallowed, or vetoed. In the early years of our colonial history the Parliament of England had no share in the direction of colonial affairs. It was the King who owned all the land, made all the grants, gave all the charters, created all the colonies, governed many of them, and stoutly denied the right of Parliament to meddle. But when Charles I. was beheaded, the Long Parliament took charge of the management of affairs in this country, and although much of it went back to the King at the Restoration in 1660, Parliament still continued to legislate for the colonies in a few matters. Thus, for instance, Parliament by one act established the postal service, and fixed the rates of postage; by another it regulated the currency, and by another required the colonists to change from the Old Style to the New Style--that is, to stop using the Julian calendar and to count time in future by the Gregorian calendar; by another it established a uniform law of naturalization; and from time to time it passed acts for the purpose of regulating colonial trade. %104. Acts of Trade and Navigation.%--The number of these acts is very large; but their purpose was four fold: 1. They required that colonial trade should be carried on in ships built and owned in England or in the colonies, and manned to the extent of two thirds of the crew by English subjects. 2. They provided a long list of colonial products that should not be sent to any foreign ports other than a port of England. Goods or products not in the list might be sent to any other part of the world. Thus tobacco, sugar, indigo, copper, furs, rice (if the rice was for a port north of Cape Finisterre), must go to England; but lumber, salt fish, and provisions might go (in English or colonial ships) to France, or Spain, or to other foreign countries. 3. When trade began to spring up between the colonies, and the New England merchants were competing in the colonial markets with English merchants, an act was passed providing that if a product which went from one colony to another was of a kind that might have been supplied from England, it must either go to the mother country and then to the purchasing colony, or pay an export duty at the port where it was shipped, equal to the import duty it would have to pay in England. 4. No goods were allowed to be carried from any place in Europe to America unless they were first landed at a port in England.[1]