134 Industrial Experiments in Colonial America. 



evil — it will oblige us to set up manufactures of our own, which 

 will entirely destroy the naval stores trade and employ the very 

 hands that might be employed on stores. The mischief appears 

 certain ; the remedy is easy. Since the prices of English goods 

 became so dear, nine years ago, this put the colonies on making 

 buttons, stufifs, kerseys, linsey woolsey, shalloons, flannels, etc., 

 which has decreased the importation of those provinces above 

 £50,000 per annum. In those days, they had Spanish gold and 

 silver and a New England coin to make the balance, of which 

 they sent home from £30,000 to £70,000, annually, until it was 

 all gone. The exportation from England has increased actu- 

 ally, but not relatively, for the simple reason that three men 

 require more clothing than two. The want of money neces- 

 sarily arises from the difference between our import and export, 

 obliging us to make the balance in money when we had it ; and 

 the necessity of the government calling for a paper credit, which 

 obtained a currency in all payments and purchases and made 

 way for the easy shipping of all our gold and silver, and the 

 necessity ceasing with the war, the Treasury sinks all paper, 

 and leaves us without a medium and in a helpless and deplor- 

 able condition.^ Hence the proposition for a land bank. The 

 best way to keep the colonies firm to the interest of the king- 

 dom is to keep them dependent on it for all their necessaries, 

 and not, by any more hardships, to force them to subsist of 

 themselves. If they once run into manufacturing, what will 

 they ask from England ? Allow them to keep the balance of 

 their trade, and they will never think of manufactures. But 

 if the nature of their trade or great duties on their goods destroy 

 this balance, they must make for themselves, and will, since 

 they have plenty of materials; but the notion is wild and un- 

 grounded of the plantations ever setting up for themselves." 

 The proposition for a land bank, to which Mr. Banister re- 

 fers, was contained in a petition signed by 182 gentlemen and 

 merchants of New England in 1715.- In view of the continued 



ipor a refutation of this theory of the currency see Wm. Doug- 

 lass's "Currencies of the British Plantations," edited by Chas. J. 

 Bullock in Arrier. Econ. Assoc. Studies, Vol. II, No. 5. 



2" Petition of Gentlemen and Merchants for a Land Bank," dated 

 June 15, 1715. B. T. New Eng., V: 56. 



