Horse RAISING IN CoLoNtIAL New ENGLAND 917 
Christopher, Montserrat, and Surinam (1381). In 1731 Governor Jenks 
places them first in importance among the exports of the colony, and 
states that at that time there were ten or twelve. vessels engaged in 
the West Indies trade (132). Ten years later the number of vessels 
had grown to one hundred and twenty (133). Douglass also confirms 
the importance to the Rhode Islanders of horses as an article of com- 
merce (134), while the Reverend James MacSparran, for a long time 
resident in the colony, tells of the ‘‘ fine horses which are exported to 
all parts of English America ’’ (135). 
Newport ‘and Providence were the main ports of embarkation, but 
many horses were shipped on small vessels directly from the farms 
in the Narragansett country (136), where was found the greatest center 
of the livestock production. In 1745 Moses Brown, one of the more 
prominent of the Providence merchants, had eight vessels under his 
management, ‘‘ some to Surinam with horses ’’ (137); while the cor- 
respondence of one Newport firm indicates that during the years from 
1731 to 1773 this firm was shipping horses as a regular part of its 
eargoes to all the British islands and to Curacao (138). 
EXPORTATIONS FROM CONNECTICUT PORTS 
At the outset the horses sent out from Rhode Island came into com- 
petition with those that continued to be sent from the Massachusetts 
Bay region, but before long it was Connecticut that had come to be 
the chief rival in the trade.? The renewed enforcement of the Molasses 
Act after the close of the war with France in 1763 dealt a hard blow 
to the commerce of Rhode Island, which had been the chief center for 
the distillation of rum from the molasses received from the French 
islands,” and with the considerable decline in its trade which followed 
went a lessening of the exportation of horses from its ports and a partial 
diversion of the trade to the easily accessible outlet at New London 
in Connecticut, where such shipments had for some time been well 
established. 
2One Newport captain in 1731 quaintly complains to his owners that he has been 
unable to dispose of his cargo of horses at Antigua because “ there was 3 New London 
men arrived before I landed. They sold there horses for tow pistoles a head which is 
true.”’ (Massachusetts Historical Society, Collections, 7th ser., vol. 9, no. 69, p. 16.) 
10The former prohibitive duty of sixpence a gallon was reduced in 1764 to threepence ; 
and the act was finally repealed in 1766 and a tax of only one penny a, gallon was 
‘imposed instead. But between the war and these duties, Rhode Island commerce suffered 
heavily. 
