History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce, Volume 2 (of 4)

by W. S. Lindsay

On the continent of British North America the new duties and the rigorous measures adopted to restrict or put down the trade so long carried on with the French and Spanish settlements speedily produced consequences which the narrow-minded politicians at home did not anticipate. The extinction of the French and Spanish shipping trade caused, as its natural result, a serious diminution of the direct carrying trade between England and the North American colonies, and this, again, depriving them of their accustomed market, prevented their being any longer able to consume British manufactures to the same extent as formerly, or even to discharge debts due to creditors in England. Hence an effect not anticipated: in that the Americans, forming associations to dispense with English manufactures, were led to resort to native industry, and thus to lay the foundation of a permanent rivalry, the end of which cannot even now be conjectured. In short, a national American spirit was evoked, highly antagonistic to British interests.

Passing of the Stamp Act.

Trade interrupted.

Public opinion was in this excited state when the Stamp Act of the Grenville Administration received the Royal assent on the 22nd of March, 1765, and was to come into operation on the 1st November following. A distinction was instantly drawn in the colonies between that and the preceding measure. The language of the Act was severely criticised, but the real grievances were, that Great Britain, by this Act, indiscreetly interfered with the trade and shipping of the colonies, cut off one chief source of their prosperity, and sought by a Stamp Act to collect internal duties in the colonies under the authority of the Commissioners of Stamps at home. When the stamps arrived in New York, they were, with universal consent, committed to the flames by the people, excepting one small parcel which the magistrates secured, with the reservation that they should not be made use of. From that day the transaction of business between the two countries became impracticable. The rivers and wharfs were deserted; vessels lay in the harbours with their colours hoisted half-mast high; the courts of justice were closed; and instead of a thriving maritime population in the sea-ports, all was neglect and stagnation. A general agreement was entered into by the merchants not to import any more goods from Great Britain, nor to receive any goods on commission consigned from that country after the 1st January, 1766, and as Ireland was exempted from this ban, the seeds of discord were sown among all parties. The Americans even meditated the prohibition of the export of tobacco to Great Britain, but this step would have proved even more fatal to the planters of Virginia and Maryland than to those persons against whom it had been imposed. The resistance to the authority of the mother-country was universal in New England, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and the two Carolinas. But the provinces at the northern and southern extremities of the continent submitted to the authority of the British Crown, as did also the West India Islands, excepting those of St. Christopher and Nevis.

The effects of the Stamp Act in America recoiled with redoubled force upon Great Britain. Most of the merchants connected with the colonial trade suspended payment; while her shipowners felt severely the interruption of commerce between the two countries; the manufacturers and workmen throughout the kingdom were to a large extent thrown out of employment—misfortunes greatly aggravated by the high price of provisions, the vessels laden with them having been embargoed in all the ports. In the end, the shipowners of London, Liverpool, Bristol, Hull, and Glasgow, with the manufacturing towns in Lancashire, petitioned the Legislature for relief; and, in 1766, the obnoxious Stamp Act was repealed. This repeal, though received with great joy in all parts of England, and re-echoed by the Americans, was materially modified on the other side the Atlantic by the preamble of the Declaratory Act[214] which censured the American legislatures for assuming the right of taxation in the colonies, declaring the American colonies subordinate to the English crown and parliament, whose legislative authority, it was asserted, extended to American subjects in all cases whatsoever. The resumption, however, of navigation and commerce produced the most salutary effects, and harmony was for a season restored between the two countries.

But in the interval between the repeal of the Stamp Act and the following year a new state of things had arisen. The notion of self-government had taken hold of the American agitators. In their provincial assemblies they set the Declaratory Act and the authority of the mother-country at defiance, while in England, on the other hand, it was deemed essential to assert the supremacy of the Legislature by even more effectual proceedings.

Non-intercourse resolutions.

Accordingly a fresh American Taxation Act was passed in 1767, imposing import duties on tea, glass, and other articles, the object being to assert the right of taxing the colonies. It was, however, found impossible to collect the new duties. The people of Boston, Massachusetts, were conspicuous for their violence in resisting this new and vexatious impost, at the same time proposing a strict union of all the local assemblies in British America to oppose the law and to insist on its repeal. Troops were sent to enforce allegiance to the authorities. The Boston merchants and shipowners, however, were resolute in their action, and the seizure of a sloop belonging to one of their citizens causing much excitement, they passed a further resolution of non-intercourse, at one of their numerous meetings, unless the last obnoxious Act was repealed. The inhabitants of New York carried similar resolutions. In this unsatisfactory way matters continued till 1770, when the Act was repealed in all articles except tea. The people of America had, however, begun to feel still more their strength, and declared any such reservation to be inadmissible. In 1774, when vessels having this article on board reached Boston, the people seized the tea, threw some portion of it overboard, and destroyed the remainder, suspending all business of landing and shipping goods in Boston harbour after the 1st June, 1774, and declaring all charter-parties, bills of lading, and contracts executed in England for shipping goods from that port null and void.

Recourse to hostilities.

But commercial intercourse was soon afterwards opened by the British American colonies with France and Holland, which was connived at by both countries in spite of authoritative prohibitions and representations by the court of Great Britain. While the American colonists refused to have any trading intercourse with England, the Parliament of this country, in spite of the petitions of its shipowners and parties interested, and actuated by the same unwise and unaccountable policy, passed an Act to prevent the New Englanders from fishing on the coasts of Newfoundland, Labrador, or Nova Scotia, and declaring all vessels thus employed liable to seizure after the 20th of July, 1775. But before that time the fatal blow had been struck which led to a total severance of peaceful relations between the two countries. The inhabitants of the northern and southern provinces joined in a confederation against the British with all the vigour and well-known energy of their race; casting cannon, and employing themselves in learning military exercises with such a menacing attitude that Governor Gage seized the ammunition and stores lodged near Boston, thus causing an open rupture. The skirmish at Lexington followed, where sixty men were killed on each side; and the king’s forces were besieged in Boston. The military ardour of the Americans augmented as the crisis approached, their rulers at once assuming, after the oppression to which they had been subjected, the justifiable powers of an independent executive under the title, at first, of the United Colonies, with all the functions of a government de facto. The war with the Colonies then broke out. To trace the details of the struggle, which terminated in the separation of these vast regions from the British Empire, is not within the scope of this work, but it will be necessary to give as comprehensive a view of the state of our shipping business with America at that important epoch as our space will admit of: the documents published by both countries are very numerous.