to the outer world only through Spain, and through only one Spanish port,-first Seville, and afterward Cadiz. Worse still, until 1748, goods could be imported from Europe through only the one favored port in Spain, and (for all the wide-lying New Spain in North and South America) to only two American ports, and at special times. Two fleets sailed each year from Spain, one to Porto Bello on the Isthmus, for all the South American trade; the other to Vera Cruz in Mexico. All other trade, even between the separate Spanish colonies, was prohibited under penalty of death. From the most distant districts, -Chile or Argentina, - goods for export had to be carried to Porto Bello to meet the annual fleet. Then was held a fortydays' fair, to exchange the European imports for precious metals, tropical woods, and hides. By this arrangement, in many parts of South America, the prices of European goods were increased to five or six times the natural amount, while the products with which the colonies paid were robbed of value by the cost of transportation. The cattle raised on the vast plains of the Argentine could reach a lawful market only by being carried across the continent to Peru, thence by sea to Panama, again across the Isthmus to Porto Bello, and (one chance a year) from that port to Seville. In the early years of the eighteenth century, at Buenos Aires, an ox was worth a dollar, and a sheep three or four cents, and values had risen to this point only because some contraband trade had sprung up, in spite of the terrible penalties. To go from Spain to America, except to a few favored places, was not merely to go into exile, but to renounce civilization. The restrictions on trade prevented the colonists from starting with the achievements of European civilization, and drove them back, in many cases, to the barbarism of the natives. modern. 137. Compared with that sort of thing, England's policy was Her statesmen did not aim, consciously, to benefit the home country at the expense of the plantations. They strove to make the parts of the empire helpful to one another, so that the empire as a whole might be self-supporting, independent of the rest of the world in industry and economics. In large measure they wished this system of tariff "protection" for the 138] THE NAVIGATION ACTS 117 industries of the empire as a means toward military protection -like American statesmen after the war of 1812 (§ 507). 138. As a continuous system, the English policy began with the "First Navigation Act" of 1660. This law had two purposes. The original one was semi-military, to increase the shipping of the empire. Until this time, most European goods, even most English goods, had been carried to the colonies by Dutch vessels. England's navy had sunk low. But the safety of the island and of her colonies rested upon command of the In that day, trading vessels were easily turned into war vessels; and to build up a merchant marine was a natural measure for naval protection. Accordingly this law provided that all trade between England and the colonies should be carried only in ships owned, and, for the most part, manned, by Englishmen or colonials.1 seas. This part of the Act was highly successful. Holland's carrying trade, and her naval supremacy, received a deadly blow. Nor did this part of the law discriminate against the colonies in the interest of England. Rather it directly benefited them, especially the northern ones. Temporarily, trade suffered from lack of ships, and from consequent high freights; but the Act created the great shipbuilding industry of New England. In less than twenty years the colonies were selling ships to England. By 1720 Massachusetts alone launched 150 ships a year, and the shipbuilders of England were petitioning parliament, in vain, for protection against this invasion upon their ancient industry. The carrying trade of the empire also passed largely into the hands of New Englanders; and this trade was protected by the English war navy, to which the colonists contributed only a few masts from their forests. A second part of the law (added at the last moment by amendment) somewhat restricted exports. Sugar, tobacco, cotton-wool, ginger, and dyewoods, were thereafter to be carried from a 1"... ships which truly . . . belong to the people of England or Ireland ... or are built of and belonging to any of the said Plantations or Territories. . . and whereof the master and three fourths of the mariners at least are English." The word " English" always included the colonials, and it was specifically defined in this sense by a supplemental Navigation Act two years later (Source Book, No. 100, a, and note). These colony only to England or another English colony. "enumerated articles" were all semi-tropical. New England could still send her lumber, furs, fish, oil, and rum to any part of the world—if only they were carried in her own or English ships. Tobacco was the only "enumerated article " produced for export at that time on the continent of North America; and for the restriction on tobacco, England gave an offset. She forbade her own citizens to raise tobacco, or import it from foreign colonies, so giving Virginia and Maryland a monopoly of her market. American students find it hard to remember that the navigation laws were adopted mainly with a view to the English West Indies, not with regard to the colonies that grew later into the United States. In 1697 Jamaica alone had more commerce with England than all the continental colonies together north of Virginia, while the West Indies, Maryland, and Virginia (the sugar and tobacco colonies) had seven times as much English trade as all the other colonies. 139. The import trade was first restricted by the Navigation Act of 1663. Thereafter, it was ordered, all European goods must pass to the colonies only through English ports. This act was designed to keep colonial trade from falling into the hands of other countries. It increased the profits of English merchants; but, to guard the colonists against paying double taxes, a rebate of the English import duties was allowed on all goods reshipped for the colonies.1 140. This was as far as the system went until after 1690. (1) The subtropical colonies could export their products only to England or other English colonies; (2) all imports to all colonies must come through England; (3) all ships in the colonial trade must be English or colonial. 1 In 1660 tariff duties both for the colonies, and for England, had been imposed on a long list of goods. In the colonies, however, this Act was always practically a dead letter. There was no proper machinery to enforce it; and no serious attempt was made to do so. Whenever the restrictions were seriously troublesome, they were evaded by smuggling. In 1700, it is estimated, one third the trade of New York was in smuggled goods. § 141] THE NAVIGATION ACTS 119 A Massachusetts ship could still carry any product of that colony to any part of the world, exchange for goods there, carry these goods to England, and then "reship" them for an American port, or exchange them for other European goods in the English markets, to be then carried to America. Says Channing (United States of America, 32): "It is impossible to say whether the net result of this system. . . was in favor of Great Britain or the colonies." See FOR FURTHER READING.-The best brief treatment of the general phases of this period is Andrews' Colonial Self-Government, 3-40. also Channing's History of the United States, II, 1-13. A TYPICAL ENGLISH TRADING VESSEL OF COLONIAL TIMES. The Schooner "Baltick" coming out of St. Eustatia, Dutch West Indies, November, 1765. From a water color now in the Essex Institute, Salem, Mass. II. NEW ENGLAND, 1660-1690 141. Charles II found himself beset with accusations against Massachusetts. In 1656 Quakers had appeared in that colony. Three, who persisted in returning after banishment, had been hanged, while several others, women among them, had been flogged brutally. The Quakers complained to Charles, and in 1660 he ordered the colony to send all imprisoned Quakers to England for trial. But the men of Massachusetts were resolved to permit no appeal from their own courts. They chose rather to empty the jails, and drop the persecution. Afterward, for a time, the persecution was renewed, with Charles' approval, but no more executions took place. Imprisonments and whippings were the common fate of Quakers in England and in all the colonies of that time except Rhode Island. These Quakers, of course, were not the quiet, sober brethren of later times: many of them were half-mad fanatics. "It was a little hard," says Lowell, "to know what to do with a woman who persisted in interrupting your honored minister in his sermon, calling him Priest of Baal, and breaking empty bottles over his head" (in sign of his emptiness). None the less, the three executions remain a bloody blot on the fame of Massachusetts. Nowhere else was a death penalty inflicted by law. It does seem a little strained, however, to speak, as a recent historian does, of "wholesale hangings " of Quakers in Massachusetts. (The Source Book, No. 88, gives some interesting documents from the Quaker side.) The King was irritated also by learning that Massachusetts had usurped the right to coin money (the famous "Pine Tree Shillings") during the Commonwealth, and that two of the "regicide" judges who had passed sentence on his father were still sheltered in New England. Worst of A PINE TREE SHILLING. From the origi- all, perhaps, the Bay Col nal in the Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society. The XII means twelve pence. Note the spelling of "Mas There is no allusion to sachusetts." England's authority. ony disregarded the Navigation Acts, and, in 1661, even adopted a daring resolution styling such legislation "an infringement of our rights." 142. For the moment, Charles contented himself with demanding (1) that an oath of allegiance be taken in the colony; (2) that the Episcopalian service be permitted; and (3) that the fran |