106 NEW ENGLAND FISHERIES 



horses, lumber and fish. The last named were not fit for 

 European markets. If a duty were placed on molasses, 

 the protest continued, it would amount to a prohibition. 

 Distilleries would have to be closed to the ruin of many 

 families, the rum trade of Africa would cease, two-thirds 

 of their vessels would be rendered useless and perish on 

 their hands, the nursery of seamen would be destroyed, 

 and the mechanics who depend upon the merchants would 

 be compelled to seek employment elsewhere. The French 

 West Indies would get their lumber from the Mississippi 

 region, erect their own distilleries, and export rum to the 

 Indians and to Africa. The British West Indies would not 

 consume near the New England produce; therefore, if it 

 could not be sold, a great part of the produce would be lost. 

 Jamaica, the only English island that supplied Rhode Is- 

 land with molasses, frequently failed to do so for want 

 of sufficient supply. The planters of the British West 

 Indies had no grounds for complaint if the people of New 

 England purchased of others what British merchants could 

 not furnish. 1 



Massachusetts imported, in 1763", fifteen thousand hogs- 

 heads of molasses, of which only five hundred hogsheads 

 were from British islands. 2 Of the 29,000 hogsheads of 

 molasses used in Massachusetts and Rhode Island in that 

 year only 3,000 hogsheads, or about eleven per cent, were 

 the produce of the English sugar islands. Thus nearly 

 ninety per cent of the trade with the West Indies, the basis 

 of which was the fisheries, was imperiled to the point of 

 annihilation by the enforcement of the navigation laws. 

 At that time the West India trade in fish was equal to 

 about sixty-four per cent of the total value of the New 

 England fisheries, not including the whale fishery which 

 was little affected by the Act. 



1 R. I. Colonial Records, VI, pp. 378-383. 



2 Bernard, Letters on Trade, pp. 2-7. 



