In the second case, the rigour of the law led to the greatest absurdity. About the year 1839, the price of coffee was very high in the London market, while large quantities of the finest Java and Dutch colonial coffee were warehoused in store in Amsterdam. This produce was clearly inadmissible under the clause already quoted, having been, beyond all dispute, “landed in Europe.” In what way could this coffee be brought into the London market in the teeth of the existing stringent Navigation Laws? The same agent, who represented one of the oldest Dutch houses, contracted to deliver a cargo of Dutch coffee at a given price at a distant period. He then chartered a British ship, which he sent to Amsterdam, took in a cargo of coffee, and the ship thus laden with Dutch colonial produce was sent to the Cape of Good Hope. At that colony the coffee was landed, or, at all events, was supposed to be landed, fresh papers were made out, and the coffee consigned to London as “naturalised” produce, and, coming direct from a British colony in a British ship, was, of course, admissible for home consumption. To despatch many thousand tons of coffee and other produce half across the globe from Europe, for no other purpose than to be brought back again, in order to comply with the rigorous provisions of the old Navigation Laws, which, in point of fact, were nullified as regards goods, while the shipowners alone reaped the advantage of this useless and protracted voyage, was surely a climax of absurdity! Nevertheless, it is within my own personal experience that a large amount of business was transacted in this way, all the expenses incurred being, in an economical point of view, a total waste of capital. [Sidenote: and obstructions to trade.] [Sidenote: Story of the cochineal.]