The revolution of 1688 marked a triumph in England for those liberal ideas in government which had not yet found expression in other countries of continental Europe. But this revolution had a significance other than political to which this spirit of liberalism did not apply. The power which was thus transferred from the Crown to Parliament was used almost as exclusively for the benefit of the mother country as the Stuarts had exercised it in behalf of their own interests.
The regulation of British industries during the Middle Ages had been carried on with reference to the needs of particular localities, or, as we might say, the town was considered the economic unit and the fostering of its trade was the objective point of all legislation. The next step in the economic development of England was taken by the Mercantilists whose ambition lay in the direction of a strong maritime power not only for the sake of protection, but also as a means of colonial expansion. After the deposition of James II the responsibility for carrying out this policy rested with Parliament. The mercantilism of the Whigs represented a broader vision than the mercantilism of the Stuarts, but it did not see beyond the mother country. It utterly failed to appreciate that there was a community of interests in which both colonies and mother country might share with equal advantage. The wealth and resources of the colonial possessions were supposed to exist solely for the benefit of England, and the restrictions involved in carrying into effect such a policy became a source of constant protest for a period extending over half a century. The justification for this protest it is the purpose of this present paper to consider.
The Whigs occupied a position of unbroken supremacy from the accession of George I down to 1760, and even before 1714 when the Tories, at times, found themselves in power they carried on the Whig principles of commercial expansion. Hence it may be said that parliamentary mercantilism was essentially a Whig policy, but this statement, like all others of a general character, must be accepted with certain limitations. The economic importance of the colonies and their existence for the sole benefit of the mother country were ideas to which England could lay no exclusive claim, nor can it be said that the Whigs after 1688 originated the doctrine of colonial subserviency. It was clearly stated in the reign of Charles II: ‘And in reguard his Majesties Plantations beyond the Seas are inhabited and peopled by His Subjects of this His Kingdome of England; for the maintaining a greater correspondence and kindnesse between them, and keepeing them in a firmer dependence upon it, and rendering them yet more beneficiall and advantagious unto it in the farther imployment and Increase of English Shipping and Seamen, vent of English Woollen and other Manufactures and Commodities, rendring the Navigation to and from the same more safe and cheape, and making this kingdom -a Staple, not onely of the commodities of those Plantations, but alsoe of the Commodities of other Countryes and Places for the supplying of them; and it being the usage of other Nations to keepe their Plantations Trade to themselves.’ Here is a complete enunciation of that policy which was later put into effective operation by the Whigs. Nor can it be said that the dominant party after 1688 initiated all the legislation which was necessary to carry this policy into execution. The Navigation Acts of 1660, 1663 and 1672 provided convenient machinery for securing the monopoly of colonial trade to ships owned in England or in her plantations, and this legislation the Whigs now proceeded to utilize. Let us now consider the legislation designed to carry into operation England’s colonial policy in the eighteenth century.
First it will be observed that this policy was not all one of restriction. Certain industries were encouraged at various times by means of bounties. Thus in 1733 a bounty of 20 s. per ton was granted to vessels bringing whale oil from the Greenland fishery, and in 1740 the bounty was raised to 30 s., and in 1749 to 40 s. But in spite of these premiums, the industry did not thrive.8 Similar expedients were used to stimulate in the colonies the growth of naval stores. In 1704 an Act was passed which enacted a bounty of £1 per ton on tar and pitch, and £6 per ton on hemp, and £1 per ton on masts and spars. The attempt to foster the hemp industry was a failure, but in other respects the act seems to have been successful. The belief that the soil and climate were well adapted for the growth of hemp was one of very early origin. Now let us turn to some of the restrictive measures.
The 10th and 11th Acts of William III declared that the woollen manufacture which was one of growing importance in the colonies ‘would inevitably sink the value of lands in England,’ and these acts proceeded to destroy all inter-colonial trade in this commodity by providing that ‘after Dec. 1, 1699, no wool or manufacture made or mixed with wool, being the produce of any of the English Plantations in America shall be loaden in any ship or vessel, upon any pretence whatever, nor loaden upon any horse, cart or other carriage to be carried out of the English plantations to any other of the said plantations, or, to any other place -whatever.’ This nascent industry was thus stunted but not crushed. How far such legislation was effective is the debatable question. About the time of the passing of these acts we find in Pennsylvania an interesting indication of a complete colonial policy the pursuance of which was undoubtedly checked because of this legislation: ‘We are endeavoring to introduce . . . the manufacture of woollen cloths and linens, so as to keep our money as much as possible in the country. For this reason we have already established fairs to be held at stated times, so as to bring the people of different parts together for the purposes of barter and trade, and thereby encourage our own industry and prevent our little money from going abroad.’ In 1719 the House of Commons resolved ‘that the erecting of manufactories in the colonies tended to lessen their dependence upon Great Britain’ and proceeded to enact a measure which, had it passed, might have totally annihilated the colonial iron industry. Instead of this measure, however, the export of American iron to the mother country was discouraged by heavy duties until 1750, when the importation of bar and pig iron was permitted. The Act of 1750, however, imposed other restrictions which obliged the prosperous iron works in New England to shut down,10 and in order that the colonial iron industry might remain in a rudimentary stage “no mill or other engine for rolling iron or furnace for making steel” was thereafter to be permitted. The fur which existed in abundance the colonists were likewise not allowed to utilize without heavy restrictions. In 1732 an Act was passed forbidding the exportation of American hats not only to England and foreign countries, but to other colonies as well. This industry in which fur is so largely used seems to have ken the only one which developed sufficiently to compete with the mother country. In this connection it is interesting to note that a seven-year’s apprenticeship was made requisite for those engaging in the business on their own responsibility, and no one could have more than two apprentices at a time or teach the industry to negroes.
Yet, in spite of these restrictions, it is still a question whether the American colonies suffered as severely as is generally maintained. It will be remembered that during a considerable portion of the period under consideration, the restrictive measures noted above, the Navigation Acts and the laws respecting the “enumerated articles” were but poorly enforced. This was especially true during the long ministry of Robert Walpole from 1722-1742 when little interest was taken in colonial affairs. The ignorance of British ministers in regard to the American colonies at that time would seem to indicate that the latter were left very much to their own devices. An interesting sidelight on how affairs relating to the colonies were conducted during this period is furnished in the Memoirs of George II: ‘It would not be credited what reams of paper, representations, memorials, petitions from that quarter of the globe lay mouldering and unopened in his (Duke of Newcastle’s) office. He knew as little of the geography of his province as of the state of it. When General Ligonier hinted some defence to him for Annapolis, he replied with his evasive, lisping hurry, ‘Annapolis, Annapolis; Oh, yes! Annapolis must be defended, to be sure, Annapolis should be defended—where is Annapolis ?’
In the first place, it would be difficult to account for the rapid increase in population if the restrictive measures of Parliament were so detrimental to the economic interests of the colonies. The estimate of the Board of Trade which had its agents in the colonies, fixed the population in 1714 at 434,600; in 1727 at 580,000; and in 1760 the figure reached was approximately a million and a half. To be sure after 1713, when the Treaty of Utrecht made the importation of slaves an object of colonial policy, the black population increased at an alarming rate so that by 1760 there were 386,000 blacks in the territory which is now comprised in the present limits of the United States. In addition to the negro element there was also a large number of criminal whites who had been sent over from England, but subtracting both of these elements from the total number of inhabitants and at any given time during this period the population still shows a healthy rate of increase which would hardly have been the case had economic conditions been unfavorable. The importation of negro slaves to carry on the labor of the American plantations was not only a great source of profit to England, but it was also a coordinate part of her colonial policy as the following extract serves to show: ‘Were it possible for White Men to answer the end of Negroes in Planting, must we not drain our own country of Husbandmen, Mechanichs and Manufacturers too? Might not the latter be the Cause of our Colonies interfering with the Manufactures of these Kingdoms, as the Palatines attempted in Pennsylvania? In such Case indeed, we might have just Reason to dread the Prosperity of our Colonies; but while we can be well supplied with Negroes, we need be under no such Apprehensions; their Labor will confine the Plantations to Planting only.’ Many protested against this vast importation of slaves, and among them South Carolina. But these protests went unheeded, and as late as 1775 Lord Dartmouth, Secretary of State for the Colonies said, ‘We cannot allow the colonies to check or discourage in any degree a traffic so beneficial to the nation.’
Besides the question of population a second point respecting the “enumerated articles” now comes up for consideration. The commodities listed under these articles which were reserved for shipping to England only included ‘the tobacco of Virginia, the rice and cotton of Carolina and the sugar of the West Indies,’ and in 1706 rice and naval stores were added to the list. How far the restriction on these commodities imposed a check on the industries which they represented we will now consider.
First, it will be observed that the natural sources of wealth in New England were fish, cereals and timber, which were not included in the enumerated list at all, and hence might be shipped anywhere. New England carried on a lucrative trade in these products not only with the other colonies, but with the West Indian islands belonging to Great Britain, France, Denmark and Spain. The Navigation Act, together with the natural advantages she enjoyed in the form of good harbors and a plenteous supply of ship-building material, were factors which enabled the New Englanders to compete on favorable terms, not only with the British merchants, but with the British ship-builders.19 In spite of the Act of 1750, which was intended to prevent the growth of the iron industry beyond its rudimentary stages the New Englanders manufactured anchors, chains and marine fittings made of bog iron, the ore of which they extracted from the mud of ponds. Other industries were carried on mostly under the domestic system such as the making of cloth, bobbins, spools and nails. What we may call intensive manufacturing did not exist, but the reasons for this, it seems to me, cannot be attributed to England’s repressive laws. The colonies were still frontier communities in the first half of the eighteenth century, and the occupations of the inhabitants were largely determined by the operation of natural economic forces. The frontiersman must first subsist, and in the primitive state of society he is not likely to be bound by laws made three thousand miles away. Applying this statement to the condition of the American colonies in 1760 and recognizing in it a fair element of the truth we shall have a clearer conception of the ineffectiveness of Parliamentary control. Intensive manufacturing was not within the realm of possibilities. There was little or no capital in the colonies, credit was but little developed, and money in the form of tobacco, wheat, corn, cattle and cow bells was hardly a satisfactory or possible foundation on which to erect an imposing industrial system. Finished goods could be bought from England in 1728 at a far lower price than they could be made for in the colonies, and this statement, I am inclined to believe, holds good for the whole of the eighteenth century. A report to the Lords of Trade in the above year stated that ‘it cost fifty per cent, more to manufacture silks, linens and woollen goods in the colonies than in England, and that there was no available labor in America for any extensive manufacturing of these goods.’
In regard to the great staple, tobacco, it is by no means clear that its exportation only to England served as a hindrance to the industry. England became merely the middle man for the distribution of this commodity throughout Northern Europe. Joshua Gee, one of the ablest writers of the eighteenth century said, ‘the royal exchequer profits very little from the enumeration of tobacco. Three-fourths of the duties which are levied at the time of the importation into England are repaid on the re-exportation of the better grades of tobacco to the ports of Northern Europe. The poorer grades cannot be sold in the Mediterranean markets in competition with native grown tobacco, owing to the increased cost which two freights entailed; the result is that the poorer tobacco is destroyed by fire on the London docks.’ The tobacco was merely cut, dried and sorted in the colonies, and in order to be prepared for smoking or for snuff, it had to be sent to England. This process, which could be performed in England cheaper than in the colonies, was a necessary step in making the commodity marketable. England, therefore, rendered an adequate service in return for the exclusive privileges she enjoyed in handling colonial tobacco not only by turning it into the finished product and by acting as a distributing agent, but by maintaining a high standard for this commodity in foreign markets. It was likewise to her own advantage to encourage tobacco growing in the colonies, and this had been her policy from the beginning in forbidding the importation of foreign tobacco, as well as its cultivation in England. In view of these facts, it is by no means clear that tobacco as an enumerated article constituted a measure in restraint of trade.
The enumeration of rice seems to have placed the planters of South Carolina and Georgia for a time at some disadvantage. The protests of the colonists were, however, met in a conciliatory spirit, and they were allowed to export their rice directly to ports south of Cape Finisterre upon payment of one-half the duty required, if it had been landed in Great Britain.
In regard to naval stores, although they were on the enumerated list, the bounties were successful in stimulating their production, as we have noted on a previous page; hence there was no real grievance here.
The Sugar Act of 1733 undoubtedly was the most unjustifiable measure up to the time of the Stamp Act, and had it been possible to enforce this act the result would have been very injurious to the American colonists. In order to understand the Act of 1733 it is necessary to trace the causes leading up to its enactment.
The balance of trade was almost always against the colonies, and in 1754 the amount was £200,000 in favor of Great Britain. This balance was made good in two ways: (1) by freight money, which went mostly to the New Englanders, whose share in this commerce was very large; (2) by a very profitable trade with the West Indies. It was against this latter trade so important in adjusting the annual trade balance that the Sugar Act was directed. New England ships carried fish, beef, pork, poultry, horses, oxen, sheep and hogs to the French, Spanish and Danish Islands in the West Indies, and considerable quantities of corn, beans, oats, bread and flour from the Middle Colonies. This trade was, of course, illicit.23 The southbound cargoes were a good deal more valuable than the return cargoes of sugar, molasses and rum, purchased in these islands. Consequently, the balances paid to the New England shippers in the form of coin and bills of exchange ultimately found their way to England in payment for manufactured goods imported into the northern colonies from that country. One reason why this illicit trade was more profitable than a similar trade with the British West Indies may be found in the fact that a 414% duty was levied on the sugar products exported from these islands while a duty of only 1 % was collected on the same commodities from the French islands. In addition to this, British West Indian sugar was an “enumerated article,” and because of the “double voyage” the cost of landing it at a continental port was 25% in excess of the price at which French sugar could be sold. Yet, in spite of the enumeration of this article, the law seems to have been constantly evaded, and in 1720 it was reported to the Lords of Trade that sugar, molasses and rum were being constantly exported directly to Europe, and that from New York alone enough sugar had been sent to pay into treasury £1,000 had it been landed in England. It is obvious, therefore, that the British West Indian planters could not compete with the French-grown product, and in reply to their protests Parliament, in 1733,27 placed a duty of 9 d. on a gallon of rum, 6 d. on a gallon of molasses, and 5 s. on each hundred weight of sugar. The measure was as unwise as it was ineffective. The real difficulty was the expense of the double voyage, and, had the British planters realized this, as they eventually did, they would have fared much better.
The Sugar Act could not be enforced, and was practically a dead letter from the start. Hence, it is difficult to see how this measure along with the others which we have considered can be regarded as resulting in a definite economic grievance. It was the political rather than the economic character of all this legislation which was the real basis of dissatisfaction, and it is this phase of the question which I wish to emphasize.
In general, it may be said that the period from 1700 to 1763 in the American Colonies was one of great prosperity, the normal development of which was but little effected by Parliament’s policy of restriction. In 1763, however, when Lord Grenville became prime minister, this period of salutary neglect came to an abrupt end. His resolution to enforce the trade laws marks the widening of the chasm which was soon to separate, forever, the American colonies from the mother country. But this process of estrangement had been going on for years, and in so far as the trade laws contributed to the final separation it should be remembered that it was the political character of these laws, and the spirit in which they were conceived that furnished the real grievance. On this point Arthur Young said, ‘Nothing can be more idle than to say that this set of men, or the other administration, or that great minister occasioned the American War. It was not the Stamp Act, or the repeal of the Stamp Act; it was neither Lord Rockingham nor Lord North, but it was that baleful spirit of commerce that wished to govern great nations on the maxims of the counter.’
After the political separation of the colonies from Great Britain, the major part of the colonial trade continued to be with that country and this fact has a very proper significance. It shows that the colonists with the old restrictions wiped away were still trading in those same channels to which, previously they had been nominally confined by Parliamentary action. ‘Trade is not carried on for the sake of friendship, but of interest,” said the venerable Dean Tucker in 1776, “and if after a separation, the colonists shall find, that they can trade with greater advantage with us, than with others, they certainly will, not for our sakes, but for their own.’ These words were amply verified and their significance for us lies in the fact that they contain a great economic truth. England’s colonial policy in the eighteenth century in trying to harness up natural economic forces was as effective as the tenderfoot’s efforts to hold to the back of a bucking broncho. It was in the very nature of things impossible to keep the freedom loving colonists from trading where or with whom it was for their interests to trade. ‘Indeed,’ said the Dean of Gloster, ‘It is now become evident, that it ever was, and ever will be impossible for the Parent State to prevent the Colonies from trading with other Countries, if there is a prospect of trading with advantage.’ As the bulk of the colonial trade was with England before the Revolutionary War, and this increased after it was ended, the only inference is that the colonists resumed this trade because they found that it was “to their advantage” to do so. Thus all the measures of restriction which we have considered furnished a grievance more apparent than real and one which was, in its leading features, political rather than economic.”
(Note: The author’s references were deleted from this post and can be found with the original article.)
Reference Data:
History Teacher's Magazine, Vol. 4, by American Historical Association, National Board for Historical Services, National Council for the Social Studies, 1913, pages 123-7
