THE HAND OF THE GIANT 249 



In the eighteenth century the pioneer era of opening the 

 North American continent was over. A new and enthusiastic 

 rush of Europeans, partly French but predominantly English, 

 poured across the Atlantic seeking new homes — and by 

 ''homes'' they meant freehold lands and freedom for mind 

 and spirit. This new century and this new impulse was Protes- 

 tant and rational, well suited to start the great expansion of 

 material growth and prosperity across the waters that the later 

 invention of the steam engine and the cotton gin so much 

 accelerated. Commerce increased all along the North Ameri- 

 can seaboard, particularly in New England. As early as the end 

 of the seventeenth century the English home government was 

 worried about this. The minutes of the Privy Council record: 

 ''New England is become the great mart and staple by which 

 means the navigation of the Kingdom is prejudiced, the king's 

 revenue is expressibly impaired, the price of home and foreign 

 commodities lessened, trade decreased, and the King's subjects 

 much impoverished." 



Here is the same European jealousy and concern with the 

 growth of power in the west now transferred from worrying 

 about the Negroes in the Caribbean to the codfish Yankees 

 and their able merchant marine. So the pressure was put on by 

 various Acts of Trade aimed at curbing too much independ- 

 ence in the colonies; and the Yankees answered back when 

 the Massachusetts Assembly declared: "We humbly conceive, 

 according to the usual sayings of the learned in the law, that 

 the laws of England are bounded within the four seas and do 

 not reach America . . . and not being represented in Parlia- 

 ment we have not looked to ourselves to be impeded in our 

 trade by them." From now on the die was cast, and in com- 

 mercial terms — though as like as not argued on a very high 

 level of morality. It was no longer conquer and convert; it was 

 liberty of action and freedom of trade for a New World people 

 becoming more and more self-sufficient and self-confident. 



