They prosecuted their various branches of busi ness with great vigour. Tobacco was the great staple of the people of Maryland and Virginia. The New Englandmen had various articles of ex port. To the West Indies they sent dry codfish, salt mackerel, beef, pork, bread, beans, flour, peas, and other provisions, '' to the diminution," says Sir Josiah Child, " of the vent of these commodities from this kingdom: the great experience of which, in our West. India plantations, soon be found in the advantage of the value of our lands in Eng land, were it not for the vast and almost incredible supply these colonies have from New England." To England they sent great masts, furs, and train oil: but the greater part of their payments for Eng lish manufactures were made in sugar, cotton, wool, tobacco, and the other productions of Virginia and the West Indies.
In 1690, to the cod and mackerel fisheries which had been prosecuted from an early period, the Americans added the whale fishery. It originated at the island of Nantucket in boats from the shore. In 1715, six sloops of thirty-eight tons each, were employed in this fishery from that island. For many years their adventures were confined to the American coast, but as whales grew scarce here, they were extended to the Western Islands, and to the Brazils, and at length to the North and South Seas.
About the year 1694, the cultivation of rice was introduced into South Carolina. It soon became the staple of that country; and in 1706, was, by an act of parliament, placed among the enumerated commodities, and could only be shipped directly to Great Britain: but, afterwards, in the year 1730, it was permitted, under certain limitations and re strictions, to he shipped directly from Carolina to any part of Europe south of Cape Finisterre.
In 1703, the Swedes absolutely refused to let the English have any pitch or tar, although ready mo ney was always paid for it, unless England would permit it all to be brought in Swedish shipping, and at their own price. This induced the British government to offer a bounty of four pounds per ton for pitch and tar, three pounds for rosin or turpentine, six pounds for hemp, per ton, and one pound per ton for all masts, yards, and bowsprits, imported from the English plantations in America. The materials for the production of pitch, tar, and turpentine, being abundant in America, 6000 bar rels of these articles were sent from New England in one fleet, and great quantities from the southern colonies. In 1729, new and more moderate pre miums were granted on these articles.
The repeated, perhaps we ought to say habitual violations by the Americans of the Navigation Law of 1660, induced the British parliament to attempt to strengthen that law by another act in 1696, by another in 1707, and by a third in 1742.
About the year 1715, the British colonists in the West Indies, began to complain of the North Ameri cans supplying the Dutch colony of Surinam "with vast numbers of small horses, and with provisions, fish, Cc. In return for which they took molasses, which they made into rum." This trade was not contrary to the spirit of the British trade acts, for that government had no objection to its subjects breaking in upon the colonial monopolies of the other European powers; but the British West India planters continuing their complaints of the trade with the Dutch, and addling thereto complaints of a similar trade carried on with the French and Danish colonists, a bill was passed by the House of Commons in 1731, to prohibit, tinder the penalty of a forfeiture of ship and cargo, the importation of sugar, rum, and molasses, from the plantations of foreign powers, and to require bonds from the exporters of horses and lumber, that they should not carry them to any foreign country. The Bri tish West Indians asserted that the North Ameri cans were enabling the colonists of other European powers to undersell them in the sugar market. The North Americans, on their part, contended that if they were deprived of this commerce, they could not obtain rum and molasses enough for the Indian trade and the fisheries, nor specie to pay for British manufactures. Their representations were so co gent that the bill was dropped in the House of Lords ; but the Wrest India planters continuing their complaints, to pacify them a bill was passed by parliament in 1733, imposing a duty of nine pence sterling on every gallon of ruin imported from foreign colonies into the British plantations in America, sixpence on every gallon of molasses, and four shillings on every hundred weight of sugar and paneles—to be paid down in ready money by the importers before the landing of the same.
This duty on rum was afterwards reduced to six pence, and that on molasses to three-pence a gallon. It was always very odious to the northern colonists; being justly considered by them as sacrificing their interests to those of the sugar planter. And it is well known, says Mr Pitkin, that although this duty was attempted to be collected in the colonies, by officers appointed by the crown, arid by severe legal penalties, yet by smuggling, or some other way, the paymeta of it was generally evaded.