24 The Fishery Question, 



gent application of the Navigation laws 

 checked the export trade, the irritation of 

 the colonial merchants appeared. Parliament 

 decided to enforce these regulations, and to 

 that end armed the captains of the English 

 men-of-war and revenue cutters with the 

 powers of customs officers/^ Deprived of 

 their markets and threatened with the exter- 

 mination of smuggling, the merchants became 

 more and more rebellious. The passage by 

 Parliament of an act making molasses and 

 sugar, the product of the West Indies, dutia- 

 ble in colonial ports, gave to the French and 

 English a virtual monopoly of the Fisheries. 

 Vessels formerly engaged in the carrying 

 trade were freighted with the fishing plant 

 and sold abroad. 



Only evasions of the law and the growth of 

 the Inter-colonial market sustained the Indus- 

 try. On the eve of the Revolution the fishing 

 towns were fairly prosperous. Stephen Hlg- 

 ginson testified before a committee of the 

 House of Commons, pending the considera- 

 tion of a bill framed to punish rebellious New 

 England by depriving her of participation in 

 the cod fishery, that should the measure pass, 

 over six thousand two hundred Inhabitants of 



