EAST OF THE MISST^fr't 1 ! !11VER.' 101 



vessel s, 1 1 a v i gated by E n glishmenpu i/ler' pei^fohof : C r-f oiture." This 

 restrictive act was followed in 16G3 by an act* wb'ich 'proMbited the im- 

 portation of any commodity, the growth, production, or manufacture of 

 Europe, into the British plantations, but what was laden in England, in 

 English ships, manned in most part by Englishmen. Thus the colonists 

 were compelled to buy in England not only all English manufactures, 

 but everything else that they might need from any soil but their own. 

 The motive of this act is avowed in its preamble : 



The maintaining a greater correspondence and kindness between the subjects at 

 home and those in the plantations, keeping the colonies in a firmer dependence upon 

 the mother country ; making them yet more beneficial to it in the further employment 

 and increase of English shipping and seamen, and in the vent of English woolen and 

 other manufactures and commodities ; rendering the navigation to and from them more 

 safe and cheap ; and making this kingdom a staple not only of the commodities of 

 the plantations, but also of the commodities of other countries and places for their 

 supply; it being the usage of other nations to keep their plantation trade exclusively 

 to themselves. 



These acts were enforced in the colonies and had the effect to stimu- 

 late woolen manufacture and intercolonial trade. The activity of New 

 England shipping was not liked by the English merchants, and at their 

 instance Parliament resolved, in 1673, to exclude New England mer- 

 chants from competing with the English in the markets of the Southern 

 plantations 5 the liberty of a free traffic between the colonies was taken 

 away, and several enumerated commodities taken from one colony to 

 another were subjected to a duty equal to or equivalent to the duty on 

 the consumption of these commodities in England. Adverse legislation 

 went farther, and America was forbidden, by an act of Parliament, not 

 merely to manufacture those articles which might compete with the 

 English in foreign markets, but even to supply herself, by her own in- 

 dustry, with those articles which her position and her resources enabled 

 her to manufacture with success. 



The feeble attempts of the colonists to make a portion of their own 

 clothing from their abundant raw materials attracted the attention of 

 the royal governors, and was not unnoticed in England. Governor 

 Nicholson, of Virginia, in 1698, suggested the prohibition of the cloth 

 manufacture in the colonies, and other royal governors gave similar 

 counsels on the subject of this and other industries and watched the de- 

 velopment of the arts with a vigilance which betrayed the jealousy of 

 colonial manufactures, especially that of inferior wool into coarse cloth- 

 ing. But inferior as was the wool, and feeble as was the attempt to 

 manufacture it into coarse home-made clothing, the English merchant 

 and manufacturer made complaints, because some of the product began 

 to be exported to foreign markets formerly supplied by England, and an 

 act passed the British Parliament in which the existence of such a nian- 

 faeture in the colonies is, for the first time, recognized on the statute 

 book. This act is thus noted by Mr. Bancroft: 



In 1699, the system, which made England the only market and the only storehouse 

 for the colonies, received a new development by an act of Parliament, which reached 



