Horse Raising in Colonial New England 911 



ernoi' Robert Lowtlicr, of Barbados, writing to the Board of Trade as 

 early as 1715, states: '^ It would be of great advantage to this place^ 

 and to all his Majesty's Sugar Colonies, if there was made a law in 

 England to Restrain His Subjects in North America from exporting 

 Horses into any country not under his Majesty's Dominion, for the 

 French at Martinique and Guadelupe and the Dutch at Soronam begin 

 to rival us in the sugar trade and this is owing to the great Supplies 

 of Horses thej^ receive from New England " (112). Other British 

 governors and numerous sugar planters continued to write to the Board 

 of Trade in a similar vein, protesting especially against the trade 

 between the northern colonies and the French, which they claimed was 

 in violation of the treaty of neutrality made in 1686 between Great 

 Britain and France. 



The matter came to a climax in 1731, when the British planters 

 presented a petition to Parliament with a draft of a bill which would 

 specifically forbid the continental colonies to sell '' horses, lumber, and 

 provisions " to any but British subjects (113). Hearings were held 

 on this bill and much evidence was brought out to indicate that the 

 trade in horses was a very important part of this commerce. The 

 testimony of a certain William Eraser is a fair sample of the large 

 amount of evidence in this connection. In 1729 he claimed to have 

 seen about thirty New England vessels at Martinique and St. Lucia 

 trading horses for molasses, and he stated further that the New Eng- 

 landers told him that if they brought in sixty horses alive they paid 

 nothing for their permission to trade. 



The .continental colonies vigorously defended their right to trade 

 with the French and the Dutch, and the bill finally failed to pass.^ A 

 long and acrimonious discussion ensued, finally resulting in the passage 

 of the so-called "Molasses Act, "*^ which, by putting a prohibitive duty 

 on the importation of foreign sugar, molasses, and sirups, aimed to put 

 an end to the questioned trade. This act, however, because of the lack 

 of adequate machinery for its enforcement, could not at that time be 



5 An incorrect statement to ithe effect that such sales of horses to foreign sugar islands 

 were prohibited in 1731 appears in the volume on Rhode Island Commerce, Massachusetts 

 Historical Society, Collections. 7th ser., vol. 9, no. 69, p. 14, note 2, 



« 6th George II, Chapter 13. This act provided for a duty of sixpence a gallon on 

 molasses and sirups, and five shillings a hundred pounds on sugar imported from any 

 foreign American plantation into any British colony. Importations from Spanish and 

 Portuguese sources were exempted, thus maliing the act in effect a hindrance only to 

 trade with the French and the Dutch. 



