her colonists to work in those more refined manufactures even for their own consumption; but insists upon their purchasing of her merchants and manufacturers all goods of this kind which they have occasion for.

She prohibits the exportation from one province to another by water, and even the carriage by land upon horseback or in cart, of hats, of wools and woollen goods,1 of the produce of America; a regulation which effectually prevents the establishment of any manufacture of such commodities for distant sale, and confines the industry of her colonists in this way to such coarse and household manufactures, as a private family commonly makes for its own use, or for that of some of its neighbours in the same province.

To prohibit a great people, however, from making all that they can of every part of their own produce, or from employing their stock and industry in the way that they judge most advantageous to themselves, is a manifest violation of the most sacred rights of mankind. Unjust, however, as such prohibitions may be, they have not hitherto been very hurtful to the colonies. Land is still so cheap, and, consequently, labour so dear among them, that they can import from the mother country, almost all the more refined or more advanced manufactures cheaper than they could make them for themselves. Though they had not, therefore, been prohibited from establishing such manufactures, yet in their present state of improvement, a regard to their own interest would, probably, have prevented them from doing so. In their present state of improvement, those prohibitions, perhaps, without cramping their industry, or restraining it from any employment to which it would have gone of its own accord, are only impertinent badges of slavery imposed upon them, without any sufficient reason, by the groundless jealousy of the merchants and manufacturers of the mother country. In a more advanced state they might be really oppressive and insupportable.

Great Britain too, as she confines to her own market some of the most important productions of the colonies, so in compensation she gives to some of them an advantage in that market; sometimes by imposing higher duties upon the like productions when imported from other countries, and sometimes by giving bounties upon their importation from the colonies. In the first way she gives an advantage in the home-market to the sugar, tobacco, and iron of her own colonies, and in the second to their raw silk, to their hemp and flax, to their

1 [Hats under 5 Geo. II, c. 22; wools under 10 and 11 W. III, c. 10.]

indigo, to their naval-stores, and to their building-timber. This second way of encouraging the colony produce by bounties upon importation, is, so far as I have been able to learn, peculiar to Great Britain. The first is not. Portugal does not content herself with imposing higher duties upon the importation of tobacco from any other country, but prohibits it under the severest penalties.

With regard to the importation of goods from Europe, England has likewise dealt more liberally with her colonies than any other nation.

Great Britain allows a part, almost always the half, generally a larger portion, and sometimes the whole of the duty which is paid upon the importation of foreign goods, to be drawn back upon their exportation to any foreign country. No independent foreign country, it was easy to foresee, would receive them if they came to it loaded with the heavy duties to which almost all foreign goods are subjected on their importation into Great Britain. Unless, therefore, some part of those duties was drawn back upon exportation, there was an end of the carrying trade; a trade so much favoured by the mercantile system. . .

Of the greater part of the regulations concerning the colony trade, the merchants who carry it on, it must be observed, have been the principal advisers. We must not wonder, therefore, if, in the greater part of them, their interest has been more considered than either that of the colonies or that of the mother country. In their exclusive privilege of supplying the colonies with all the goods which they wanted from Europe, and of purchasing all such parts of their surplus produce as could not interfere with any of the trades which they themselves carried on at home, the interest of the colonies was sacrificed to the interest of those merchants. . . .

But though the policy of Great Britain with regard to the trade of her colonies has been dictated by the same mercantile spirit as that of other nations, it has, however, upon the whole, been less illiberal and oppressive than that of any of them.

III. WORKINGS OF THE COLONIAL POLICY IN ENGLAND

A. Balance of Trade Theory, 16301

An important phase of the mercantile system, though by no means the whole of it, was the insistence upon the desirability of amassing within the country a great

1 England's Treasure by Forraign Trade. By Thomas Mun (London, 1664). In Economic Classics. Edited by W. J. Ashley (New York, 1895), 7-8.

store of the precious metals. Since England had no mines of her own, either at home or in her colonies, she could hope to obtain this only by exporting more commodities than she imported and receiving the difference in gold and silver, that is by maintaining a so-called favorable balance of trade. This was perhaps first clearly stated by Thomas Mun, an English merchant and director in the East India Company. His book was written in 1630, but was not published till thirty years later.

Although a Kingdom may be enriched by gifts received, or by purchase taken from some other Nations, yet these are things uncertain and of small consideration when they happen. The ordinary means therefore to encrease our wealth and treasure is by Forraign Trade, wherein wee must ever observe this rule; to sell more to strangers yearly than wee consume of theirs in value. For suppose that when this Kingdom is plentifully served with the Cloth, Lead, Tinn, Iron, Fish and other native commodities, we doe yearly export the overplus to forraign Countries to the value of twenty two hundred thousand pounds; by which means we are enabled beyond the Seas to buy and bring in forraign wares for our use and Consumptions, to the value of twenty hundred thousand pounds; By this order duly kept in our trading, we may rest assured that the Kingdom shall be enriched yearly two hundred thousand pounds, which must be brought to us in so much Treasure; because that part of our stock which is not returned to us in wares must necessarily be brought home in treasure.

B. The Purpose of the Navigation Acts, 17641

The conception of the acts of trade as a series of measures designed to promote the interests of the British Empire as a whole, in which the colonies were regarded as parts of a larger whole, is here presented by ex-Governor Pownall. Properly administered they would create “a grand marine empire."

The laws of trade respecting America, were framed and enacted for the regulating mere plantations; tracts of foreign country, employed in raising certain specified and enumerated commodities, solely for the use of the trade and manufactures of the mother-country- the purchase of which the mother-country appropriated to itself. These laws considered these plantations as a kind of farms, which the mother country had caused to be worked and cultured for its own use. But the spirit of commerce, (operating on the nature and situation of these external dominions, beyond what the mother country or the

1 The Administration of the British Colonies. By Thomas Pownall (London, 1774), I, 251-2.

Colonists themselves ever thought of, planned, or even hoped for) has wrought up these plantations to become objects of trade; has enlarged and combined the intercourse of the barter and exchange of their various produce, into a very complex and extensive commercial interest: The operation of this spirit has, in every source of interest and power, raised and established the British government on a grand commercial basis; has by the same power, to the true purposes of the same interest, extended the British dominions through every part of the Atlantic Ocean, to the actually forming A GRAND MARINE EMPIRE; if the administration of our government, will do their part, by extending the British government to wheresoever the British dominions do extend.

C. Advantage to England of Colonial Shipping, 17401

According to the prevailing mercantilist doctrine the building up of a strong navy and of a merchant marine was essential to a nation's strength. Consequently the New England colonies were particularly valuable as they aided England by the building of ships, the production of naval stores, and the development of the carrying trade.

I have heard some People exclaim against some of the Northern Colonies, and look upon them as Rivals to their Mother Country, and particularly in regard to this Article of Shipping and supplying Europe with Rice and Corn. This Notion seems to me to be ill grounded, for if Ships were restrained from being built in those American Parts, what an immense Quantity of Cash would go out of this Kingdom, to purchase Ships as well as Materials for Building, at Norway and other foreign countries, since it is a received Opinion that there is not Timber enough in England, at a convenient Distance, to answer the Demands of the British Navigation, without great Prejudice to his Majesty's Navy. And what a Stagnation would there be to the Vent of almost all Sorts of British Produce and Manufactures, which now go to those American colonies, to build ships, and to carry on the many branches of Trade that arise from our Plantations, and bring home to Great Britain such vast Quantities of Sugar, Tobacco, Shipping, Naval Stores, Rice, Rum, Furs and Train-Oil, besides Ginger, Cotton, Indigo, Piemento, Cocoa, Coffee, Aloes, Dying-Wood, and other American Products? And by a Circulation of Trade a considerable Balance is thereby brought home to the na

1 Memoirs and Considerations concerning the Trade and Revenues of the British Colonies in America. By John Ashley (London, 1740), 22-25, passim.

tional Stock from several Countries of Europe, whereby we received no small share of the Products of the Mines of Brazil, Peru and Mexico: The flourishing State of this grand Commerce, and the Revenues arising therefrom, are in no small degree owing to a low freight, occasioned chiefly from our building Ships so cheap in our American Plantations. .

The Northern Colonies are a great Support to the naval Power of Great Britain, and assist in great Measure in giving us a Superiority at Sea over all other Nations in the World: They add largely to our Trade and Navigation the Nursery of Seamen; the Indulgence given them by granting a bounty upon the importation of Pitch, Tar and Turpentine, has answered the intention as they have thereby brought the Prices of those Commodities from upwards of 50s. per Barrel, down to 10s. per Barrel and under; which is attended with this further Convenience, that it aids them in making Returns for the immense Quantity of Goods that are exported from Great Britain to those Colonies, and it also prevents five times the Value thereof from going out of the Kingdom in Cash to Sweden, and other Foreign Countries. And they also supply the King's Yards with great Quantities of Masts, Yards and Bowsprits, instead of those of foreign Growth, and may in Time, with proper Encouragement, do the like in regard to Hemp and Iron, and even with this further Advantage, that British Produce and Manufactures will purchase what is of the Produce of our own Plantations, and Cash chiefly must go to purchase what is of the Produce of foreign Countries.

D. The Colonies a Source of Raw Materials, 17751

Throughout the seventeenth and the first half of the eighteenth centuries the colonies were esteemed by England chiefly as sources of raw materials and commodities not produced at home. As long as this point of view prevailed the West Indies and the southern colonies in North America were valued more highly than the northern colonies, since they were in a different climatic zone than England and thus yielded products which were in demand there. This view finds constant expression in the pages of American Husbandry, though by the time it was published a different theory had begun to control colonial policy.

It may not be improper here to review the staples of these colonies, the southern ones, and the islands, as they all unite in the circumstance of having such valuable staples as render them in every respect highly valuable to Great Britain, and more so than other settlements more to the north can prove. The commodities chiefly produced in

1 American Husbandry. By an American (London, 1775), II, 231-4, passim.