The Bounty System. 79 



a restriction. In May, 1723, a memorial was received by the 

 Board of Trade from the London merchants, informing them 

 that the inhabitants of the plantations were mostly ignorant 

 of the proper methods of preparing tar and had refused to pre- 

 pare trees at all, if they could not get the premium except by 

 the new rules. The merchants prayed that some skillful per- 

 son be sent over to instruct them.^ As a matter of fact, this was 

 precisely what Bridger was supposed to have done, but it had 

 doubtless been impossible for him to give personal instruction 

 to any extent; and when he had caused printed rules to be dis- 

 tributed, the people had refused to abandon their old methods 

 unless the superiority of the new way should be demonstrated 

 before their eyes. 



The rapid increase in exportation from the plantations had 

 tended to confirm the people in their disposition to let well 

 enough alone; so that the act of 1721 served eflfectually to sup- 

 press what little enthusiasm the original bounty provision had 

 aroused. At any rate, the fact that the development of ship- 

 building and woolen manufacture, together with the rapid in- 

 crease in the carrying trade in what served as the staples of New 

 England, was rendering the inhabitants less likely to be de- 

 pendent on the development of the naval stores trade, was 

 enough to make the disappointment less serious to the pro- 

 ducers. 



The merchant-importers' point of view was quite dififerent. 

 In the next year (1724), another petition was made by certain 

 "importers and dealers in tar," insisting that the prescribed 

 rules were impracticable in the plantations, and that tar could 

 not be made from green trees.- They begged that the premium 

 be continued on tar made by the old method, which had already 

 been proved practicable, as enclosed certificates of the goodness 

 of American tar from ten ship-wrights testified.^ If the planta- 

 tions stopped making tar, as they certainly would if the rules 



^Memorial of merchants trading to the Plantations, B. T. Plants. 

 Gen., L: 44. 



«Ibid. ^B. T. Plants. Gen., L: 54. 



