There was no attempt to disguise its purpose.

"The Bent and Design," wrote Charles Davenant, "was to make those colonies as much dependant as possible upon their Mother-Country," by preventing them from trading independently and so diverting their wealth.

The effect would be to give English, Irish, and colonial shipping a monopoly of the carrying trade within the Empire.

The act also aided English merchants by the requirement that goods of foreign origin should be imported directly from the place of production; and that certain enumerated commodities of the plantations should be carried only to English ports.

These enumerated commodities were products of the southern and semitropical plantations: "Sugars, Tobacco, Cotton-wool, Indicoes, Ginger, Fustick or other dyeing wood." To benefit British merchants still more directly by making England the staple not only of plantation products but also of all commodities of all countries, the Act of 1663 was passed by Parliament.