WEBVTT NOTE 35. Mercantilist Restrictions 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.000 Volume 2, Chapter 35, Mercantilist Restrictions 2 00:00:06.000 --> 00:00:21.000 The fundamental attitude of England toward its colonies was one of imperial domination, regulation and exploitation for the benefit of the merchants and manufacturers of the imperial center. 3 00:00:22.000 --> 00:00:29.000 The basic mercantilist structure was built up by the Navigation Acts during the 17th century. 4 00:00:30.000 --> 00:00:47.000 Even before Britain was in a position to attempt to enforce these regulations, the aim was to benefit English trade and to supply the home country with raw materials, but always for the enhancement of the English merchant or manufacturer. 5 00:00:48.000 --> 00:00:54.000 The means was a growing network of restrictions and prohibitions to be enforced by the arm of the state. 6 00:00:54.000 --> 00:01:01.920 The Navigation Acts had begun with the Cromwellian Protectorate as the Puritan Revolution began 7 00:01:01.920 --> 00:01:09.800 to be transformed into the Counter-Revolution and eventually into a not very jolting restoration 8 00:01:09.800 --> 00:01:18.600 of the stewards. The first Acts of 1650-51 prohibited the export of colonial and non-European 9 00:01:18.600 --> 00:01:46.640 The major aim of the Axe was to crush the efficient and flourishing Dutch carrying trade, 10 00:01:46.640 --> 00:01:52.040 which provided unwelcome competition for English shippers. 11 00:01:52.040 --> 00:02:00.480 The Navigation Act of 1660 greatly broadened the navigation laws by prohibiting in colonial 12 00:02:00.480 --> 00:02:10.960 trade all non-English or non-American ships manned by crews less than 75 percent English. 13 00:02:10.960 --> 00:02:16.160 An early edition also insisted that the ships must be English-built. 14 00:02:16.160 --> 00:02:22.840 Furthermore, the Act erected a category of enumerated articles, the most important commodities 15 00:02:22.840 --> 00:02:30.040 in the colonial trade, which Americans could sell only to England or to another English 16 00:02:30.040 --> 00:02:31.040 colony. 17 00:02:31.040 --> 00:02:41.160 Thus, other European countries could not bid against English purchasers or English shippers. 18 00:02:41.160 --> 00:02:48.360 Indigo was the major commodity in the enumerated list, which also included sugar and indigo. 19 00:02:48.360 --> 00:02:56.800 The next Navigation Act, the Staple Act of 1663, assured a monopoly of colonial trade 20 00:02:56.800 --> 00:03:05.480 to English merchants by prohibiting any import of European goods into the colonies that did 21 00:03:05.480 --> 00:03:14.600 not pass through England and pay English duties, and were not carried on English-built ships. 22 00:03:14.600 --> 00:03:21.620 There were a few specified exemptions. The extra tax also constituted a subsidy to English 23 00:03:21.620 --> 00:03:29.620 manufacturers in the colonial market by artificially burdening their foreign competitors. From 24 00:03:29.620 --> 00:03:35.520 From the beginning, the Crown had great difficulty in enforcing these acts, and the American 25 00:03:35.520 --> 00:03:43.300 colonists happily participated in the ancient English tradition of extensive smuggling. 26 00:03:43.300 --> 00:03:49.700 The later blocks of the Navigation Act structure consisted of attempts to counteract these 27 00:03:49.700 --> 00:03:57.580 evasions and enforce the regulations. The Plantation Duty Act of 1673 tried to crack 28 00:03:57.580 --> 00:04:04.020 Backdown on the practice of one colony shipping tobacco to another, for instance Virginia 29 00:04:04.020 --> 00:04:10.980 to Maryland or North Carolina to Boston, the second colony then freely re-exporting the 30 00:04:10.980 --> 00:04:13.500 staple to Europe. 31 00:04:13.500 --> 00:04:20.020 The new act provided that the colony must pay the English import duty on all shipments 32 00:04:20.020 --> 00:04:28.260 of enumerated goods from one colony to another, and also prohibited their re-export. The Act 33 00:04:28.260 --> 00:04:35.180 also provided for colonial royal customs collectors, of whom the redoubtable Edward Randolph was 34 00:04:35.180 --> 00:04:44.580 an outstanding early example. The Climatic Navigation Act came in 1696. It provided for 35 00:04:44.580 --> 00:04:50.480 for tightened enforcement of previous acts, including giving customs officials the right 36 00:04:50.480 --> 00:04:57.480 of forcible entry in search for violations, and the creation of vice admiralty courts 37 00:04:58.080 --> 00:05:05.080 without jury trials for violators, thus trying to circumvent the tendency of American juries 38 00:05:06.100 --> 00:05:13.100 not to convict smugglers. Furthermore, in 1705, the list of enumerated articles was 39 00:05:13.100 --> 00:05:21.100 was lengthened to include rice, molasses, timber, and naval stores, plus many other items. 40 00:05:21.100 --> 00:05:25.100 Copper and fur were added in 1722. 41 00:05:25.100 --> 00:05:40.560 To supervise the workings of 42 00:05:43.100 --> 00:06:05.100 paid and active members and allied to the English merchants. During its first 20 years, the board pursued an energetic course, but by the early 1720s, it had succumbed to the happy and deliberate indolence of the Walpole administration in England. 43 00:06:05.100 --> 00:06:13.820 In 1714, Queen Anne, a high tory possessed of reactionary instincts, died and was succeeded 44 00:06:13.820 --> 00:06:23.740 to the throne by George I. With King George, the Whigs came securely to power, and in 1722 45 00:06:23.740 --> 00:06:31.660 Robert Walpole entered upon a long tenure as the king's chief minister. Walpole, moderately 46 00:06:31.660 --> 00:06:39.560 Every liberal and pacific headed a centrist Whig oligarchy. Walpole wanted only to govern 47 00:06:39.560 --> 00:06:46.900 in peace and quiet, to keep government meddling low-key, and to let natural social forces 48 00:06:46.900 --> 00:06:54.420 bring prosperity to England. He was wise enough to know that an inactive and sluggish and 49 00:06:54.420 --> 00:07:02.080 and therefore harmless government implied an active and thriving citizenry. 50 00:07:02.080 --> 00:07:07.980 Under Walpole, not only did the Board of Trade become quiet and inactive, but also the once 51 00:07:07.980 --> 00:07:14.980 powerful Privy Council became an innocuous and virtually honorary body. 52 00:07:14.980 --> 00:07:20.180 The colonies were governed by one of Britain's two Secretaries of State, the Secretary of 53 00:07:20.180 --> 00:07:23.080 State for the Southern Department. 54 00:07:23.080 --> 00:07:28.480 These foreign duties included not only all the colonies, but France and Southern Europe 55 00:07:28.480 --> 00:07:36.320 as well. Under Walpole's rule, the American colonies found to their delight that the numerous 56 00:07:36.320 --> 00:07:44.480 mercantile regulations, prohibitions and dictates were simply not being enforced. One reason 57 00:07:44.480 --> 00:07:51.200 was Walpole's happy instincts for letting men be free to administer their own affairs, 58 00:07:51.200 --> 00:07:57.520 as well as his insight that colonial trade needed to be let alone rather than regulated 59 00:07:57.520 --> 00:08:04.520 and restrained. Another reason was the heavy burdens laid upon the Secretary of State. 60 00:08:05.040 --> 00:08:10.560 The third was Walpole's inspired choice for Secretary of State for the South. This was 61 00:08:10.560 --> 00:08:17.560 young Thomas Holes Pelham, Duke of Newcastle. Willing and eager to leave the colonies alone 62 00:08:17.560 --> 00:08:24.560 Under Newcastle, delighted Americans found that the onerous regulations, restrictions and charges upon them were simply not being attended to. Newcastle brought the activist of the British colonial administration to dissent. 63 00:08:47.560 --> 00:08:56.240 and spare, as messages piled up on his desk, unread and unheeded. Newcastle has too often 64 00:08:56.240 --> 00:09:03.080 been written off as adult by historians. Better would be the explanation that he was close 65 00:09:03.080 --> 00:09:09.500 to the moderately liberal Whig intellectuals of St. John's College, Cambridge, where Master 66 00:09:09.500 --> 00:09:17.500 Mr. John Newcomb kept alive a tradition of civil liberty and of Locke and Newton. Newcomb's 67 00:09:17.500 --> 00:09:26.240 nephew, Bishop Samuel Squire, also an historian and educated at St. John's, became Newcastle's 68 00:09:26.240 --> 00:09:33.460 chaplain and private secretary. Particularly beloved in the colonies was John Lord Monson, 69 00:09:33.460 --> 00:09:39.900 President of the Board of Trade in the late 1740s, who magnificently refused even to 70 00:09:39.900 --> 00:09:46.760 submit colonial business to higher authorities, or to make any recommendations whatever on 71 00:09:46.760 --> 00:09:54.000 colonial affairs. Apart from the Navigation Acts, other imperial restrictions on the colonies 72 00:09:54.000 --> 00:10:01.380 were designed to cripple any threatened growth in manufacturers that might compete successfully 73 00:10:01.380 --> 00:10:08.740 with English Firms. As woolen factories began to develop in New England and on Long Island 74 00:10:08.740 --> 00:10:16.700 in effective competition with English woolens, England passed the Wool Act in 1699, viciously 75 00:10:16.700 --> 00:10:24.940 prohibiting any exportation of raw wool or of finished woolens to any other colony or 76 00:10:24.940 --> 00:10:27.380 War to England. 77 00:10:27.380 --> 00:10:33.740 Woolen goods in this period constituted the largest single item, over one half, of British 78 00:10:33.740 --> 00:10:40.140 exports to the American colonies, and the British manufacturers were anxious to shore 79 00:10:40.140 --> 00:10:42.700 up their position. 80 00:10:42.700 --> 00:10:49.900 Although it is easier to enforce restrictions on manufacturing than on the more mobile commerce, 81 00:10:49.900 --> 00:10:56.180 And although the Wool Act blighted the development of American woolens, the industry was still 82 00:10:56.180 --> 00:11:02.900 able to grow. In 1702, the Board of Trade grumbled about English wool workers being 83 00:11:02.900 --> 00:11:09.500 enticed to America to work at the more efficient, and therefore higher-paying, woolen firms 84 00:11:09.500 --> 00:11:16.160 there. During the War of the Spanish Succession, a shortage in the available supply of English 85 00:11:16.160 --> 00:11:23.160 In 1732, parliament, under pressure of marginal and inefficient felt hatmakers in London, 86 00:11:46.160 --> 00:11:51.160 Moved to Crush Nacent Hat Manufacturers in the Northern Colonies 87 00:11:51.160 --> 00:11:53.160 The Hat Act 88 00:11:53.160 --> 00:11:58.160 1. Prohibited the export of hats from one colony to another 89 00:11:58.160 --> 00:12:06.160 2. Restricted the people allowed to make hats to those who had been apprenticed for seven years 90 00:12:06.160 --> 00:12:12.160 3. Limited the number of apprentices in each hat firm to two 91 00:12:12.160 --> 00:12:21.800 and, four, prohibited Negro apprentices. Fortunately, the act was only sporadically enforced. In 92 00:12:21.800 --> 00:12:27.480 fact, Martin Bladen of the Board of Trade ranted that the colonies were running into 93 00:12:27.480 --> 00:12:35.040 all sorts of manufactures, which must be stopped. Bladen went so far as to propose that people 94 00:12:35.040 --> 00:12:42.620 People acquitted to violations in colonial courts be retried in England, but fortunately 95 00:12:42.620 --> 00:12:49.420 this extreme suggestion was not followed. During the same year, Parliament outlawed 96 00:12:49.420 --> 00:12:56.920 the export of hops from the colonies to Ireland in reaction to American hops competing successfully 97 00:12:56.920 --> 00:13:06.520 with the English in the Irish Market. Before this, in 1722, beaver skins, furs and copper 98 00:13:06.520 --> 00:13:11.860 had been placed on the enumerated list, thereby at least partially crippling the New York 99 00:13:11.860 --> 00:13:20.180 fur trade, over a third of which exports had been to the European continent. In 1736, four 100 00:13:20.180 --> 00:13:26.200 years after the Hatt Act, Parliament struck savagely at the growing colonial manufacture 101 00:13:26.200 --> 00:13:47.320 The Iron Act of 1750 was a compromise between two groups of English manufacturers, each 102 00:13:47.320 --> 00:13:51.480 seeking a conflicting set of special privileges. 103 00:13:51.480 --> 00:13:57.880 The iron industry, second only to the woolen industry in importance to the English economy, 104 00:13:57.880 --> 00:14:06.400 was divided into two groups, the iron masters, who smelted pig and bar iron from iron ore, 105 00:14:06.400 --> 00:14:15.600 and the finished iron manufacturers, who transformed pig and bar iron into nails, machinery and 106 00:14:15.600 --> 00:14:17.520 so forth. 107 00:14:17.520 --> 00:14:23.880 The economic interest of the two groups in public policy clashed squarely. 108 00:14:23.880 --> 00:14:30.000 The iron masters were alarmed at the rapid emergence of bar iron production in the northern 109 00:14:30.000 --> 00:14:38.720 colonies after 1735, and with bitterness they called for prohibitive tariffs on the importation 110 00:14:38.720 --> 00:14:44.540 of pig iron and even the total suppression of the American iron industry. 111 00:14:44.540 --> 00:14:51.300 In this demand, they were joined by English iron mine owners and by forest owners who 112 00:14:51.300 --> 00:14:57.700 sold charcoal as fuel in the iron smelting process. 113 00:14:57.700 --> 00:15:04.460 On the other side were the finished iron producers, who wanted to encourage American bar and pig 114 00:15:04.460 --> 00:15:12.860 iron production by admitting its products duty-free, but to prohibit finished iron manufacturing 115 00:15:12.860 --> 00:15:19.420 in the colonies. They were joined by the English ship owners who wanted to encourage the two-way 116 00:15:19.420 --> 00:15:26.900 transatlantic traffic of pig iron for finished products. Finally, the latter group triumphed 117 00:15:26.900 --> 00:15:36.060 completely with the Iron Act of 1750. The act admitted colonial pig and bar iron duty-free, 118 00:15:36.060 --> 00:15:43.260 But prohibited any increase in finished iron manufacturing, including slitting mills to 119 00:15:43.260 --> 00:15:50.260 make nails, plating mills to make sheet iron, or steel furnaces to make steel. 120 00:15:50.260 --> 00:15:56.600 Fortunately, the Iron Act, too, was not very rigorously enforced. 121 00:15:56.600 --> 00:15:59.780 The iron industry continued to grow in the colonies. 122 00:15:59.780 --> 00:16:06.460 The urban finishing mills as well as the rural plantation blast furnaces for smelting ore 123 00:16:06.460 --> 00:16:14.460 into pig iron, and forges for converting pig into bar iron. The colonists, moreover, continued 124 00:16:14.460 --> 00:16:21.380 to finish most of their own bar iron. Ironworks were built in every colony but Georgia. The 125 00:16:21.380 --> 00:16:29.460 heaviest concentrations soon emerged in Pennsylvania around the Philadelphia area. However, the 126 00:16:29.460 --> 00:16:38.300 The largest plants, each a large-scale investment of $250,000, were the Principia works in 127 00:16:38.300 --> 00:16:45.540 Maryland and the works of Peter Hasenclever in New Jersey, the bulk of which was blast 128 00:16:45.540 --> 00:16:50.340 furnaces and forges for pig and bar iron. 129 00:16:50.340 --> 00:16:56.940 By the eve of the American Revolution, American production of pig and bar iron had exceeded 130 00:16:56.940 --> 00:17:00.900 The Output of All of Great Britain 131 00:17:00.900 --> 00:17:06.620 The British government, as early as the seventeenth century, had placed great importance on trees 132 00:17:06.620 --> 00:17:10.020 for masts for the Royal Navy. 133 00:17:10.020 --> 00:17:16.180 Although Britain acted to suppress competing colonial manufacturers, it wished to stimulate 134 00:17:16.180 --> 00:17:18.660 supplies for the Navy. 135 00:17:18.660 --> 00:17:25.260 For this purpose, it coercively diverted colonial timber to the production of masts and other 136 00:17:25.260 --> 00:17:35.180 The main conflict centered around this question, who should gain the use and the profit of 137 00:17:35.180 --> 00:17:43.500 the larger trees suitable for naval stores, the individual settlers or the Royal Navy? 138 00:17:43.500 --> 00:17:50.520 The Royal Navy first struck a blow in the imposed Massachusetts Charter of 1691, which 139 00:17:50.520 --> 00:17:58.000 which decreed the reservation to the Crown of all trees of 24 inches or larger in diameter 140 00:17:58.000 --> 00:18:05.700 when situated on the public domain. The charter provision, however, was not enforced. 141 00:18:05.700 --> 00:18:11.600 One of the main problems in trying to force American, particularly New Hampshire timber, 142 00:18:11.600 --> 00:18:20.040 into naval stores was that such use was uneconomic. Northern European naval stores were cheaper 143 00:18:20.040 --> 00:18:25.960 and of considerably higher quality. And the colonists had better and more profitable uses 144 00:18:25.960 --> 00:18:32.760 for their timber. A network of subsidies and prohibitions was therefore imposed. The New 145 00:18:32.760 --> 00:18:38.200 England merchants, for example, refused to produce naval stores unless the admiralty 146 00:18:38.200 --> 00:18:44.720 granted them the privilege of the advance guarantee of a fixed price, a fixed quantity 147 00:18:44.720 --> 00:18:54.000 and a Long-Term Contract. In 1705, the Naval Stores Act accordingly, one, extended the 148 00:18:54.000 --> 00:19:01.340 prohibition on private cutting to pitched pines and tar trees on the public domain, 149 00:19:01.340 --> 00:19:06.660 and to trees with 12-inch diameters or more, but the diameter was measured from higher 150 00:19:06.660 --> 00:19:13.460 up than the Massachusetts Charter, located in any of the northern colonies. Two, placed 151 00:19:13.460 --> 00:19:20.940 naval stores on the enumerated list, and, three, granted generous bounties for the exporting 152 00:19:20.940 --> 00:19:28.900 of naval stores to England, including pitch, tar, rosin, turpentine, hemp, mass, and other 153 00:19:28.900 --> 00:19:36.540 timber. Thus the carrot was combined with the stick. Cutting of the bigger trees, moreover, 154 00:19:36.540 --> 00:19:41.980 could be done only under special royal license. 155 00:19:41.980 --> 00:19:47.440 To ensure enforcement of the restrictions and to encourage naval stores production, 156 00:19:47.440 --> 00:19:53.740 the English merchants had the Board of Trade send John Bridger to the colonies. 157 00:19:53.740 --> 00:20:00.460 Concentrating on the New Hampshire coast, Bridger was still unable to enforce the restrictions. 158 00:20:00.460 --> 00:20:05.900 What is more, the Massachusetts General Court refused to follow the lead of New Hampshire 159 00:20:05.900 --> 00:20:12.380 in reaffirming the restrictive clauses of the Massachusetts Charter. Consequently, Parliament 160 00:20:12.380 --> 00:20:20.380 passed the White Pine Act of 1711, extending those provisions of the Charter to New England, 161 00:20:20.380 --> 00:20:29.160 New York and New Jersey. Moreover, the White Pine Act of 1722 prohibited cutting without 162 00:20:29.160 --> 00:20:38.120 Royal License any white pine trees that were publicly or privately owned, and growing outside 163 00:20:38.120 --> 00:20:45.400 township limits in New England, New York or New Jersey. The restrictions still proved 164 00:20:45.400 --> 00:20:52.600 unenforceable. As Bridger began to get convictions of woodsmen committing violations, the neighbors 165 00:20:52.600 --> 00:20:58.760 Bridgers of the offenders refused to buy their condemned property at auctions, and therefore 166 00:20:58.760 --> 00:21:05.880 the government could not collect its fines. Furthermore, Bridger's zeal was cooled by 167 00:21:05.880 --> 00:21:11.880 woodsmen threatening to shoot him if they caught him interfering with their livelihood. 168 00:21:11.880 --> 00:21:18.880 The sturdy New Hampshire frontiersmen, dependent on timber cutting for their livelihood, avered 169 00:21:18.880 --> 00:21:25.720 that the king has no wood, and that they will cut what and where they please. 170 00:21:25.720 --> 00:21:31.080 Indeed the regulations could not be enforced, even though further restrictions were imposed 171 00:21:31.080 --> 00:21:38.800 on the cutting of pine trees. In 1729, cutting any pine on public lands, even within township 172 00:21:38.800 --> 00:21:45.960 bounds, required a license, and any cutting on private lands, that had become private 173 00:21:45.960 --> 00:21:55.760 since 1690 of trees over 24 inches in diameter was prohibited without a license. Furthermore, 174 00:21:55.760 --> 00:22:03.040 in 1722, exclusive jurisdiction over the timber laws was turned over to the royally appointed 175 00:22:03.040 --> 00:22:10.540 and juryless vice admiralty courts. Trying to enforce the tightened restrictions was 176 00:22:10.540 --> 00:22:18.100 was the tyrannical Scott David Dunbar, Surveyor General of the King's Woods and Lieutenant 177 00:22:18.100 --> 00:22:26.340 Governor of New Hampshire. But Dunbar was checked not only by the decided lack of enthusiasm 178 00:22:26.340 --> 00:22:33.500 of Governor Jonathan Belcher, but also by magnificent countersuits filed by the timber 179 00:22:33.500 --> 00:22:40.460 cutters for their defense of their property against the surveyor. 180 00:22:40.460 --> 00:22:47.500 The counter suits, moreover, were tried in the anti-timber law civil courts of New England. 181 00:22:47.500 --> 00:22:54.960 In reaction, Dunbar began to seize and destroy the timber and equipment of the illegal loggers. 182 00:22:54.960 --> 00:23:02.840 In 1734, a pitched battle broke out near Exeter, New Hampshire. Dunbar and his men found a 183 00:23:02.840 --> 00:23:22.840 The party of illegal woodsmen and seized their cut timber. The infuriated woodsmen struck back, and Dunbar's men were beaten up and Dunbar himself endangered. The unsympathetic New Hampshire Council refused Dunbar's request for military support. 184 00:23:22.840 --> 00:23:29.320 The New England courts were understandably inclined to regard the surveyors' new power 185 00:23:29.320 --> 00:23:38.320 to reserve private trees for the Royal Navy as an invasive trespass against private property. 186 00:23:38.320 --> 00:23:44.680 Particularly galling to the colonist was the reservation of all pine trees to the crown, 187 00:23:44.680 --> 00:23:51.240 except for privately owned ones within township limits. Even Dunbar tried to permit the cutting 188 00:23:51.240 --> 00:23:59.080 of Smaller Pines unsuitable for shipmast, but he was sharply overruled by the Crown. 189 00:23:59.080 --> 00:24:06.040 When an employee of the naval subcontractor and merchant, Samuel Waldo, cut marked timber 190 00:24:06.040 --> 00:24:12.520 on private land for sale to the Navy, he was arrested for trespassing and fined by the 191 00:24:12.520 --> 00:24:19.360 Justices of the Peace. Waldo employed the British placement William Shirley, Advocate 192 00:24:19.360 --> 00:24:26.080 General of the Admiralty Court and Shirley won a not unsurprisingly favorable decision 193 00:24:26.080 --> 00:24:34.920 for the royal prerogative in the Privy Council, the case of Frost v. Leighton, 1730. Still, 194 00:24:34.920 --> 00:24:40.980 Governor Belcher, sympathetic to the private timberland owners and merchants, refused to 195 00:24:40.980 --> 00:24:49.160 enforce the onerous laws. In 1744, the new governor, William Shirley, who had intrigued 196 00:24:49.160 --> 00:24:56.640 to Aust Belcher, in league with naval contracting interests, capped his renewed drive for enforcement 197 00:24:56.640 --> 00:25:02.760 by putting through the Massachusetts legislature an extension of the reservation of large pine 198 00:25:02.760 --> 00:25:10.480 trees to all forest, private and public. Furthermore, Colonel William Pepperell, one of the great 199 00:25:10.480 --> 00:25:16.880 leaders in Maine timber, had changed from an opponent to supporter of the timber bill 200 00:25:16.880 --> 00:25:23.040 After having acquired close family connections with Samuel Waldo, he had received some of 201 00:25:23.040 --> 00:25:28.920 Waldo's naval subcontracts for timber. The upshot of the restrictions was unfortunate 202 00:25:28.920 --> 00:25:34.760 for the Crown. Its decrees could not prevent a large-scale destruction of the Royal Woods, 203 00:25:34.760 --> 00:25:41.840 while at the same time they permanently enraged the Northern Woodsmen. Indeed, the result 204 00:25:41.840 --> 00:25:47.200 of arbitrarily reserving the trees to the crown meant that private persons could not 205 00:25:47.200 --> 00:25:52.640 own a body of trees, and therefore that the individual colonists were forced to cut down 206 00:25:52.640 --> 00:25:58.640 the trees as quickly as possible. Since a colonist was forcibly prevented from owning 207 00:25:58.640 --> 00:26:05.860 the standing trees themselves, but could only use the cut lumber, this meant that the trees 208 00:26:05.860 --> 00:26:12.620 These were in a de facto state of no ownership, and it was to no one's economic interest 209 00:26:12.620 --> 00:26:19.340 to keep any of them standing. On the contrary, it was to each man's interest to cut the trees 210 00:26:19.340 --> 00:26:25.620 and thus bring them into private use before his neighbor could beat him to it. 211 00:26:25.620 --> 00:26:31.860 The consequences of the various parts of British policy can be seen in New Hampshire, a main 212 00:26:31.860 --> 00:26:44.860 Royal Licensing to allow cutting of the large white pine trees was reserved for those persons who also had MAST contracts from the Navy. 213 00:26:44.860 --> 00:26:48.860 In New Hampshire, this meant the powerful Wentworth family. 214 00:26:48.860 --> 00:26:55.860 The Wentworths had, in the first place, a virtual monopoly of the naval MAST contracts. 215 00:26:55.860 --> 00:27:04.860 They were also habitually the appointed surveyor generals, the rulers of the Royal Woods and the governors of New Hampshire. 216 00:27:04.860 --> 00:27:13.860 Thus, Benning Wentworth and his nephew John Wentworth each in his time combined all of these offices. 217 00:27:13.860 --> 00:27:24.860 By mid-century, the Wentworths were greatly helped in securing the contracts by powerful connections in England, including the Marquis of Rockingham. 218 00:27:24.860 --> 00:27:37.860 Governor Benning Wentworth, Royal New Hampshire's first governor independent of Massachusetts, did not, however, prove to be an efficient enforcer of the Royal Timber Regulations. 219 00:27:37.860 --> 00:27:48.860 For twenty years after his appointment as Surveyor of the King's Woods, Wentworth, secure in his naval contracts, happily bothered Little with enforcement. 220 00:27:48.860 --> 00:28:04.600 Wentworth made two sporadic attempts at enforcement in these two decades. In 1753, Wentworth told 221 00:28:04.600 --> 00:28:11.160 his zealous deputy, Daniel Blake, to seize all cut white pine lumber in his native Connecticut, 222 00:28:11.160 --> 00:28:17.520 whether on public or private land, in the township or out. When Governor Roger Wolcott 223 00:28:17.520 --> 00:28:24.360 of Connecticut protested this high-handed act in vain, the people of Connecticut decided 224 00:28:24.360 --> 00:28:31.200 to resort to effective direct action. Blake was rudely thrown into a pond, which experience 225 00:28:31.200 --> 00:28:38.640 served to discourage any further enforcement efforts. Wentworth's other enforcement attempt 226 00:28:38.640 --> 00:28:46.840 turned out just as badly. In 1758, Wentworth seized 1,500 white pine logs in New Hampshire 227 00:28:46.840 --> 00:28:53.940 and nearly two thousand in Massachusetts. But the confiscated logs were in each instance 228 00:28:53.940 --> 00:29:00.740 repossessed or destroyed by the angry citizens. In Massachusetts the logs were either retaken 229 00:29:00.740 --> 00:29:07.560 by the public or floated down to sea. In New Hampshire the populace burned down a saw mill 230 00:29:07.560 --> 00:29:15.200 at which Wentworth was busily converting the captured pine logs into boards of lumber. 231 00:29:15.200 --> 00:29:19.920 Nor were the substantial bounties able to create a flourishing naval stores industry 232 00:29:19.920 --> 00:29:26.240 in the northern colonies, as had been their design. We've already seen the fiasco of 233 00:29:26.240 --> 00:29:33.240 the Palatine experiment, when the Crown shipped hapless Palatine German farmers to upcountry 234 00:29:33.240 --> 00:29:41.160 New York in a vain attempt to produce naval stores. When the bounties lapsed in 1724, 235 00:29:41.160 --> 00:29:47.560 The naval stores industry in the North collapsed. Whereupon the bounties were resumed on a reduced 236 00:29:47.560 --> 00:29:55.680 scale in 1729. Only the South, particularly South Carolina, was able to develop a thriving 237 00:29:55.680 --> 00:30:03.000 naval stores industry, even under the impetus of a bounty. The most important restrictive 238 00:30:03.000 --> 00:30:12.180 Act of the first half of the eighteenth century was the Molasses Act of 1733. Since the mid-seventeenth 239 00:30:12.180 --> 00:30:19.540 century, trade with the West Indies had become vital to the northern colonies. Lacking the 240 00:30:19.540 --> 00:30:27.300 great staples of the South with their ready English market, for example, tobacco, rice, 241 00:30:27.300 --> 00:30:33.460 The North could buy English manufacturers only by selling grain and provisions to the 242 00:30:33.460 --> 00:30:39.140 West Indies in exchange for sugar and its molasses derivative. 243 00:30:39.140 --> 00:30:45.260 The North could not sell its products to England to a large extent because the English corn 244 00:30:45.260 --> 00:30:52.420 laws served to exclude northern wheat and imports of salted food were prohibited for 245 00:30:52.420 --> 00:30:55.100 the benefit of English producers. 246 00:30:55.100 --> 00:31:02.100 Boston became the great center of triangular trade with the West Indies. New England merchants 247 00:31:02.100 --> 00:31:10.740 exchanged fish and lumber for sugar and molasses, and then traded the latter to England in exchange 248 00:31:10.740 --> 00:31:18.540 for English manufacturers. After 1715, this triangular arrangement was further refined. 249 00:31:18.540 --> 00:31:26.300 The North, Newport, Boston, New York, began heavily participating in the slave trade. 250 00:31:26.300 --> 00:31:32.420 Northern ships would acquire Negro slaves in West Africa, transport the slaves to the 251 00:31:32.420 --> 00:31:40.100 West Indies, where they were in heavy demand, and then exchange them for sugar and molasses. 252 00:31:40.100 --> 00:31:46.540 The molasses would be processed into rum in New England distilleries, and the rum carried 253 00:31:46.540 --> 00:31:56.220 to West Africa to Pay for the Slaves. By 1750, in fact, there were 63 distilleries in Massachusetts 254 00:31:56.220 --> 00:32:05.420 and 30 in Rhode Island. And by 1771, American slave ships reached a capacity of fully one-fourth 255 00:32:05.420 --> 00:32:13.420 of England's mighty slave fleet. Before 1700, the Northern colonists had conducted 256 00:32:43.420 --> 00:32:51.420 of Guadeloupe, Martinique, and San Domingo. The French West Indies raised sugar at lower 257 00:32:51.420 --> 00:32:59.580 cost on newer and more fertile soil, and their management was far more efficient. Thwarted 258 00:32:59.580 --> 00:33:06.020 in the voluntary competition of the marketplace, the British planters turned to the coercive 259 00:33:06.020 --> 00:33:13.020 of the State, to try to shackle the burgeoning American, French West Indies trade. 260 00:33:13.780 --> 00:33:20.240 The British West Indian planters, led by the sugar planters of Barbados, organized a powerful 261 00:33:20.240 --> 00:33:26.480 lobby in London centered in the Jamaica coffee house and agitated for prohibition of the 262 00:33:26.480 --> 00:33:32.520 French West Indies trade. In this, they were allied to the London Association of Sugar 263 00:33:32.520 --> 00:33:39.240 for Bakers. Finally, after several years of successful agitation in the House of Commons, 264 00:33:39.240 --> 00:33:46.240 the planters obtained passage in both Houses of Parliament of the Molasses Act of 1733. 265 00:33:47.480 --> 00:33:54.480 The Molasses Act levied prohibitively high duties on any foreign sugar, molasses or rum 266 00:33:54.480 --> 00:34:24.480 The Northern Colonies protested bitterly that the subsequent great increase in the price of sugar in molasses and the lowered price of their own staples in the narrow markets of the English West Indies would be their ruination. How, indeed, could the Northerners purchase English manufacturers, as England and its manufacturers desired if they could earn more money? 267 00:34:24.480 --> 00:34:31.440 and no purchasing power if colonial manufacturing and the vital trade with the French West 268 00:34:31.440 --> 00:34:38.440 Indies were to be banned. The Molasses Act would certainly have dealt a grave blow to 269 00:34:38.440 --> 00:34:44.960 the economy of the northern colonies, but there was one great saving grace. No British 270 00:34:44.960 --> 00:34:53.700 regulation was more cheerfully evaded and less adequately enforced. The wallpoles were 271 00:34:53.700 --> 00:35:00.700 were willing to appease the powerful West Indies planters by passing the Molasses Act, 272 00:35:00.700 --> 00:35:07.940 but they were not willing to wreck the colonial economy by enforcing it, a typically charming 273 00:35:07.940 --> 00:35:14.900 wall pole compromise. In 1739, the British Sugar Act threw another 274 00:35:14.900 --> 00:35:21.060 bone to the planters for their disappointment at the failure to enforce the Molasses Act. 275 00:35:21.060 --> 00:35:25.780 The planters were now allowed to ship their sugar directly to Southern Europe without 276 00:35:25.780 --> 00:35:32.300 going through English ports. In all sugar sales to Europe, the planters were freed from 277 00:35:32.300 --> 00:35:38.820 paying English duties. This concession was gained over the fierce protest of the planters' 278 00:35:38.820 --> 00:35:45.640 erstwhile ally, the United Company of Grocers and Sugar Bakers, which wanted to continue 279 00:35:45.640 --> 00:35:50.600 to forcing the planters to sell their sugar to it. 280 00:35:50.600 --> 00:35:56.880 Three years later, the planters gained another wise concession, permission to carry sugar 281 00:35:56.880 --> 00:36:00.060 in non-British-built ships. 282 00:36:00.060 --> 00:36:06.060 This gain was made over the expected bitter complaints of the English shipbuilding industry.