The people of Connecticut have long been sensible of the many great impositions and disadvantages which beset their commercial system; yet, though sufficient power is in their own hands, they have no inclination
or resolution to attempt a reformation of it. The reason is, the mutual animosities and rancour subsisting between the dominions of New-London, Hertford, and Newhaven, each of which prefers the general ruin of the province to a coalition upon any terms short of conquest. The seeds of this discord were thus sown by these two insidious neighbours. The port of New-London is by far the best in the province, and extremely well calculated for its capital and grand commercial emporium; and about fifty years since, a number of merchants there began to export and import goods, seemingly to the satisfaction of the whole colony, but to the great displeasure and chagrin of those of New-York and Boston, whom it threatened with ruin. Something was necessary to be done. The poor Bostonians, according to custom, privately sent for their faithful allies at Hertford, to infuse into them an idea that their town ought to be the capital, and not New-London, which belonged to the Dominion of Sassacus, who had murdered so many christians; adding that, if they would engage in such an attempt in favour of Hertford, the Boston merchants would supply them with goods cheaper than they could buy them at New-London. The good people at Hertford, forgetting their river was frozen for five months in the year, remembering how they had obtained their Charter, hating Sassacus, and loving self, immediately gave in to the designing Bostonians’ suggestions, and refused to receive any more goods from New-London. The friendly Mynheers of New-York played off a similar trick upon Newhaven, and promised to support that town as the capital of the colony. The plots succeeded. Contentions and quarrels
arose among the three parties, the effects of which remain to this day. The merchants of New-London were obliged to quit Connecticut, and the trade of the province was chiefly divided between New-York and Boston, at cent. per cent. disadvantage to an ill-natured colony, and at the same time advantage to its cunning neighbours. When party spirit yields to self-interest, New-London will again become the emporium of Connecticut, where merchants will settle and import goods from foreign countries at 35l. per cent. extra profit to the consumers, and 15l. per cent. extra profit to themselves, and withal save as much in the exports from Connecticut, by taking the full price and bounty of its goods at foreign markets, instead of yielding the same to the people of New-York and Boston, who have too long kept 200,000 as negroes on their own farms, to support twice 20,000 artful citizens. Thus has Connecticut, by contention and folly, impoverished and kept in obscurity the most fruitful colony in America, to support the fame and grandeur of Boston and New-York among the trading nations of Europe. When I view the less fertile soil of Boston, the conscience of merchants, the pride of the pretended Gospel ministers, the blindness of bigotry, and the mercantile ignorance of farmers, I forgive Boston, New-York, and Rhode-Island, but condemn Connecticut. I will leave a legacy to the people of my native country, which possibly may heal their divisions, and render them partial to their own province, as the Bostonians are to theirs. It consists of two lines:
“But if men knaves and fools will be,
They’ll be ass-ridden by all three.”
Revenue and Expenditure.—In 1680 the whole corporation were estimated to be worth 120,000l. They had 30 small vessels, 26 churches, and, as above mentioned, 20,000 inhabitants. If their value had increased only in proportion with the inhabitants, who, as I have said, amounted to 200,000 in 1770, the corporation would then have been worth no more than 1,200,000l., a sum not equal to 10s. per acre, though in a great measure cultivated, and surrounded with stone walls which alone cost 10s. by the rod; but in that year, viz. 1770; land sold in Connecticut from 4l. to 50l. per acre; their vessels, also, had increased to about 1200, and the churches—least in proportion—to about 300. The true method, therefore, of forming the valuation of Connecticut in 1770, is not by calculating upon this State in 1680, but by estimating the number of its acres, appreciating them by purchases then made, and adding a due allowance for the stock, &c. Now, Connecticut has been reputed to contain 2,500,000 solid acres, which, at the very moderate price of 8l. each, are worth 20,000,000l. sterling; and 14,000,000l. being added as a reasonable allowance for stock, shipping, &c. the whole valuation of Connecticut would amount to 34,000,000l. The annual income, supposing the 2,500,000 acres and stock rented at 10s. per acre, one with another, would be 1,250,000l. A list of rateables, called the General List, is the foundation upon which the revenue is raised in Connecticut, being the valuation of a man’s property by the year. It is formed in the following manner:
Every person annually gives his list, specifying the property he possesses, to the selectmen, who send the sum total of each town to the General Assembly, when a tax of one shilling, more or less, according to public exigencies, is imposed on each pound.
According to the general list of the colony for 1770, I have underrated its annual worth, which then was fixed at 2,000,000l.; for, though that list includes the poll-tax of 18l. per head for all males above sixteen and under sixty years of age, the faculty tax, and the tax on shipping, all which may amount to 600,000l., there nevertheless remains a surplus of 150,000l. above my calculation. But, supposing a tax of one shilling in the pound (the common colonial assessment) on 1,250,000l., the produce will be 62,500l., exclusive of the poll, faculty, and other taxes. Small, however, as this assessment is, it has never been collected without much difficulty and clamour; yet the people lose, by trading with Boston, New-York, and Newport, in exports and imports, 600,000l. annually; and that for nothing but to
oblige the traders of those towns, and disoblige one another.