" The clamour against these measures was loud in England: but in America the discontent on the occasion was little short of outrage. As naval gen tlemen, the commanders of these vessels were not conversant in the duties of revenue collection; they were, therefore, oftentimes guilty of oppression: remedies were indeed at hand in England; but as the lords of the admiralty or the treasury could alone rectify any errors, check any violence, punish any injustice, or restore any violated property, it was always extremely difficult. and in many cases almost impracticable, for the Americans to obtain redress.
" But bad as this evil was, there arose one from the same source which was still worse. A trade had been carried on for more than a century between the British and Spanish colonies in the new world, to the great advantage of both, but especially the former, as well as of the mother country: the chief materials of it being on the side of the British colo nies, British manufactures, or such of their own produce as enabled them to purchase British manu factures for their own consumption; and on the part of the Spaniards, gold and silver in bullion and coin, cochineal, and medicinal drugs, besides live stock and mules; which, in the West India ph'ntations, to which places alone these articles were carried, from their great utility justly deserved to be considered of equal importance with the most precious metals.
" This trade did not clash with the spirit of any act of parliament made for the regulation of the British plantation trade; or, at least with that spirit of' trade which universally prevails in our commer cial acts: but it was found to "vary sufficiently from the letter of the forme., to give the new revenue officers a plea for doing that from principles of duty, which there were no small temptations to do from the more powerful motives of interest. Ac cordingly, they seized, indiscriminately, all the ships upon that trade, both of subjects and foreign ers, which the customhouse officers stationed on shore, either through fear of the inhabitants, a more just way of thinking, or a happy ignorance, had always permitted to pass unnoticed.
"As the advantage of this commerce was very much in favour of Great Britain, the Spanish mon archy had always opposed it: guarda costas were commissioned to scour the coasts of her American dominions, and to seize every vessel that approach ed too near them; a duty which they had exercised with such general license, as to provoke the war which broke out in 1739. The British cruizers seemed to act at this time with the same spirit in destroying this commerce, so that in a short space of time it was almost wholly annihilated.
• " This circumstance was to the northern colonies a deprivation of the most serious nature. This traffic had long proved the mine from whence they drew those supplies of gold and silver that enabled them to make copious remittances to England, and to provide a sufficiency of current specie at home.
A sudden stop being thus put to such a source of advantage, the Americans expressed the injury they sustained in the harshest terms that a sense of in jury could inspire. But in spite of' all complaints, the ministry continued to proceed in their unfortu nate career, and measures equally offensive to the inhabitants of the North American colonies conti nued to be successively adopted.
" Besides this trade, carried on between the Brit ish colonies in general, especially those in the \Vest Indies, and the Spanish, there had for a long time subsisted one equally extensive between the British North American colonies in particular, and those of the French West Indies, to the great advantage of both, as it consisted chiefly in such goods as must otherwise have remained upon the hands of the pos sessors; so that it united, in the strictest sense, all those benefits which liberal minds included in the idea of a well regulated commerce, as tending, in the highest degree to the welfare of those concerned in it.
" In these benefits the respective mother countries had, without doubt, a very large share, though it may be impossible to determine which, on the whole, had the most. 'We had enough to engage those in power to think it worth connivance, for it certainly was not strictly according to law, in con sideration of the vast quantity of manufactures it enabled our American colonies to take from us; and this also, in spite of all the clamours which those concerned in our West India trade and pos sessions could raise against it, as enabling the French to undersell them in West India produce at the foreign markets. This outcry might, indeed, be found to arise, in a great measure, from another consideration, which it was not proper for these gentlemen to avow, that of their not getting so good a price as otherwise they might expect, for such part of their produce as they sold in the markets of their mother country: and which, considering the vast demand for it, even to the poor, to whom,from long habit, it has become one of the chief necessa ries of' life, it would have savoured of oppression if it had been permitted to advance in price. But, be that as it may, this trade was suffered to be carried on in the late war between Great Britain and France; directly by means of flags of trace, and indirectly through the Dutch and Danish islands; and after wards through the Spanish port of Monte Christe, in the island of Hispaniola; till, at last, the vast ad vantages the French received from it above what the English could expect, in consequence of our having, in a manner, laid siege to their West India islands, determined government to put a stop to it.