Manufactures, colonial
As soon as the
American colonies began to manufacture for themselves, they encountered the jealousy of the
English manufacturers.
The act of 1663 extended to the “vent of English woollens, and other manufactures and commodities.”
In 1699 Parliament declared that “no wool, yarn, or woollen manufactures of the
American plantations should be shipped there, or even laden, in order to be transported thence to any place whatever.”
This was the beginning of restrictions on our colonial manufactures.
In 1719 the House of Commons said that “the erecting of manufactories in the colonies tended to lessen their dependence upon
Great Britain.”
The colonies continually increased in population, and in the products of their industry and economy, and complaints from interested persons were constantly made to the
British government that they were not only carrying on trade, but setting up manufactories detrimental to
Great Britain.
In 1731 the House of Commons direacted the board of trade to inquire and report respecting the matter.
They reported that paper, iron, flax, hats, and leather were manufactured in the colonies; that there were more manufactories set up in the colonies northward of
Virginia, “particularly in
New England,” than in any other of the
British colonies; that they were capable of supplying their own wants in manufactured goods, and therefore
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detrimental to British interests, and made less dependent on the mother-country.
The company of hatters in
London complained that large numbers of hats were manufactured in
New England, and exported to foreign countries; and through their influence an act of Parliament was procured in 1732, not only to prevent such exportation, and to prevent their being carried from one colony to another, but to
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Weaving in colonial days. |
restrain, to a certain extent, the manufacture of them in the colonies.
They were forbidden being shipped, or even laden upon a horse or cart, with an intent to be exported to any place whatever.
The colonial hatters were forbidden to employ more than two apprentices at the same time; and no negro was permitted to work at the business.
In 1750 an act was passed permitting pig and
bar iron to be imported from the colonies to
London duty free, but prohibited the erection or continuance of any “mill or other engine for slitting and rolling iron, or any plating-forge to work with a belt-hammer, or any furnace for making steel in the colonies, under the penalty of $1,000.”
Every such mill, engine, plating-forge, and furnace was declared a “nuisance,” which, if not abated within thirty days, was subject to a forfeit of $2,500. This was exceedingly oppressive; and some of the colonies, regarding these acts as violations of their charters, obeyed them only sufficiently to prevent an open rupture.
The narrow views of publicists like
Dr. Davenant and
Sir Josiah Child, and the greed of the
English manufacturers, stimulated Parliament to the adoption of such unjust measures.
Mr. Child, no doubt, expressed the convictions of the
English mind when he wrote, in 1670, that “
New England was the most prejudicial plantation to the
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kingdom.”
In fact, the people of
England from an early period regarded the
North American colonies, particularly those of
New England, as their rivals in navigation and trade.
Child declared that “there is nothing more prejudicial, and in prospect more dangerous to any mother-kingdom, than the increase of shipping in her colonies, plantations, and provinces.”
Dr. Davenant, who wrote later, was in accordance with these views of
Child.
The proceedings of the
British government were generally in accordance with the views of these writers.
It is believed that
Adam Smith (1770) was the first English writer who dared to deny, not only the policy, but the justice of these features in the
British colonial system.
In his
Wealth of Nations, he says, after giving an outline of that system: “To prohibit a great people, however, from making all they can of every part of their own produce, or from employing their stock and industry in the way they judge most advantageous to themselves, is a manifest violation of the most sacred rights of mankind.”
