It would seem as if such restrictive measures would not have been tolerated in the colonies, even when imposed by the mother country. There were, however, several very good reasons why the trade restrictions were long tolerated.
[Sidenote: Leniency of Enforcement]
In the first place, for many years they had been very poorly enforced. During his long ministry, from 1721 to 1742, Sir Robert Walpole had winked at infractions of the law and had allowed the colonies to develop as best they might under his policy of "salutary neglect." Then, during the colonial wars, it had been inexpedient and impossible to insist upon the Navigation Acts; and smuggling had become so common that respectable merchants made no effort to conceal their traffic in goods which had been imported contrary to provisions of the law.
[Sidenote: Fear of the French]
Moreover, the colonies would gladly endure a good deal of economic hardship in order to have the help of the mother country against the French. So long as Count de Frontenac and his successors were sending their Indians southward and eastward to burn New England villages, it was very comforting to think that the mother country would send armies of redcoats to conquer the savages and defeat the French.
[Sidenote: Weakness and Disunion of the Thirteen Colonies]
But even had there been every motive for armed resistance to Great Britain, the American colonies could hardly have attempted it until after the conclusion of the French and Indian War. Until the second half of the eighteenth century the British colonies were both weak and divided. They had no navy and very few fortifications to defend their coastline. They had no army except raw and unreliable militia. Even in 1750 their inhabitants numbered but a paltry 1,300,000 as compared with a population in Great Britain of more than 10,000,000; and in wealth and resources they could not dream of rivaling the mother country.
The lack of union among the colonies sprang from fundamental industrial, social, and religious differences. The southern provinces— Georgia, the Carolinas, and Virginia—were agricultural, and their products were plantation-grown rice, indigo, and tobacco. New York and Pennsylvania produced corn and timber. In New England, although there were many small farmers, the growing interest was in trade and manufacture. The social distinctions were equally marked. The northern colonists were middle-class traders and small farmers, with democratic town governments, and with an intense pride in education. In the South, gentlemen of good old English families lived like feudal lords among their slaves and cultivated manners quite as assiduously as morals. Of forms of the Christian religion, the Atlantic coast presented a bizarre mixture. In the main, New England was emphatically Calvinistic and sternly Puritanical; Virginia, proudly Episcopalian (Anglican); and Maryland, partly Roman Catholic. Plain-spoken Quakers in Pennsylvania, Presbyterians and Baptists in New Jersey, and German Lutherans in Carolina added to the confusion.
Between colonies so radically different in religion, manners, and industries, there could be at the outset little harmony or cooperation. It would be hard to arouse them to concerted action, and even harder to conduct a war. Financial cooperation was impeded by the fact that the paper money issued by any one colony was not worth much in the others. Military cooperation was difficult because while each colony might call on its farmers temporarily to join the militia in order to repel an Indian raid, the militia-men were always anxious to get back to their crops and would obey a strange commander with ill grace.
[Sidenote: Altered Situation in the Thirteen Colonies after 1763]