An Act to restrain the Trade and Commerce of the Colonies of New Jersey, Pensylvania, Maryland, Virginia, and South Carolina, to Great Britain, Ireland, and the British Islands in the West Indies, under certain Conditions and Limitations

Anno Regni GEORGII III REGIS Magnae Britaniiae, Franciae, & Hiberniae, DECIMO QUINTO. At the Parliament Begun and holden at Westminster, the Twenty-ninth Day of November, Anno Domini 1774, in the Fifteenth Year of our Sovereign Lord GEORGE the Third, by the Grace of God, of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, King, Defender of the Faith….

FIRST EDITION, [2], 463472, woodcut coat of arms on title, woodcut floriated initial, text in black letter, unbound, folio (320 x 200mm), London, Charles Eyre and William Strahan, 1775

The second of the Restraining Acts, which restricted trade for most colonies south of New England. It was passed shortly after the first which limited the export and import of any goods to and from only Great Britain, Ireland, and the British West Indies; it also prohibited the New England colonies from fishing in the waters off Newfoundland and most of America’s Atlantic coast, without special permissions and documentation, and imposed stiff penalties on both perpetrators and administrators if violations occurred. The second Act was issued upon receiving news in April that the trade boycott had spread widely among other colonies. Only New York, Delaware, North Carolina and Georgia would escape these restraints on trade, but only for a few months.

The Restraining Acts were passed one year after the first Intolerable Acts had been imposed on Boston. Instead of quieting the populace, these coercive laws had been met with increasing resistance and rising resentment among the colonials. This restraint on trade by the American colonies was one of the events leading to the American Revolution.