PAET IIJ. 



CHAPTER I. 

 The Growth of the Lumber Trade in New England. 



It was unfortunate for the promoters of the poHcy of utiHzing 

 the forests of America for the supply of the royal navy that the 

 chief mast-producing district was New England. They could 

 scarcely have found a more difBcult field for exploitation, partly 

 because of what Evelyn called the "touchy humour" of those 

 colonies, and partly because of certain economic conditions 

 which made it by no means easy to divert into English markets 

 their only available staples for foreign export. 



Josiah Child, in a pamphlet published in 1692, stated that 

 New England was the most prejudicial plantation to the king- 

 dom, and proceeded to a somewhat elaborate demonstration of 

 his proposition.^ New England, he said, differed in several 

 particulars from the other plantations. In the first place, the 

 other colonies produced commodities different from those of 

 the mother country, while New England sold fish, lumber and 

 provisions to the West Indies, in return for merchandise which 

 could be re-exported to Great Britain to pay for manufactures, 

 thus diminishing the vent of those necessaries which England 

 would otherwise have supplied to the islands. In the next 

 place, by virtue of their original charters, the New Englanders 

 were not so firmly attached to the mother-country as the other 

 colonies, and their growing political and economic independ- 

 ence ran counter to the theory that the most useful colonies are 

 those that are most dependent upon the central government, 

 and whose trade is made most subservient to the commercial 

 interest of the mother-country. The author was bound to admit 

 that the export of British manufactures to New England was 

 very important, and he could not refrain from complimenting 



1" Discourse of Trade," 1692, Ch. 10. 



