George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 4, 15th edition.

[64] mines grudged to America a share of the market for

chap. III.} 1750.

the rough material; the tanners, from the threatened inaction of the English furnaces, feared a diminished supply of bark; the clergy and gentry foreboded injury to the price of woodlands.¹ The importation of bar iron from the colonies was therefore limited to the port of London, which already had its supply from abroad. The ironmongers and smiths of Birmingham thought well of importing bars of iron free, but, from. ‘compassion’ to the ‘many thousand families in the kingdom’ who otherwise ‘must be ruined,’ they prayed that ‘the American people’ might be subject not to the proposed restrictions only, but to such others ‘as may secure for ever the trade to this country.’ Some would have admitted the raw material from no colony where its minute manufacture was carried on. The House even divided on the proposal, that every slitting-mill in America should be demolished; and the clause failed only by a majority of twenty-two. But an immediate return was required of every mill already existing, and the number was never to be increased² There was no hope that this prohibition would ever be repealed.³

England did not know the indignation thus awakened in the villages of America. Yet the royalist, Kennedy, a member of the Council of New York, and an advocate for parliamentary taxation, publicly urged on the ministry,⁴ that ‘liberty and encouragement ’