IN the commerce of the provincial era the Indian fur trade continued to play an important part. In New York, peltry was one of the chief articles of export; and Cadwallader Colden, the historian of the Iroquois confederacy, said that in this trade New York was the only English colony that could successfully compete with the French. Reference has already been made to Burnet’s establishment at Oswego and his efforts to break up the trade between Albany and Montreal. It was found impossible to stop the trade altogether, and a new measure was therefore adopted which aimed to discourage it by imposing higher duties than on the direct trade with the western Indians.¹

     A considerable Indian trade was also developed on the frontiers, from Pennsylvania southward. The founder of the Byrd family in Virginia was interested in the trade carried on by pack-horse caravans with the Catawbas, Creeks, and Cherokees of

the southwest. During the eighteenth century there was often sharp rivalry between individual colonies for the control of this trade. The Virginians, gradually losing ground before the Carolinians, complained of unfair regulations imposed by South Carolina, which afterwards had similar complaints to make of Georgia. In the south as well as in the north the international rivalry between French and English was also active. The Board of Trade complained that the trade which ought to be a source of strength to the English interest was tainted with so many abuses that it often provoked the hostility of the Indians. They therefore urged new regulations for Indian affairs. No general measures were adopted, however, for many years.¹

     Except for the Indian trade, American commerce, whether intercolonial or international, was mainly carried on by sea, and in sea-going commerce New England easily took the lead. The abundance of good harbors on her coasts, the rich resources offered by the northern coast and deep-sea fisheries, and the ready supply of lumber for ship-building had all combined to make the New-Englanders a sea-going people.

     The prosperity of New England commerce was closely related to the development of the fisheries.

During the early French wars this interest suffered severely, and it was not until the second quarter of the eighteenth century that the New-Englanders fairly established themselves in the northern fisheries. Then the industry developed rapidly all along the north shore, and in 1741 the single port of Gloucester had seventy vessels engaged. The cod-fisheries were the most important; but there was also an interesting development in whaling, from the early catch of drift-whales and the small-boat fisheries near the coast, to the deep-sea whaling which reached its prime by the middle of the eighteenth century and carried New England seamen on perilous voyages to the most remote regions of the Atlantic.¹

     The fisheries of New England may fairly be described as the foundation of her international trade; for fish was, on the whole, her steadiest article of export. The better grades were shipped to the Catholic countries of southern Europe and the produce of the trade was expended sometimes in the illegal importation of European products; but in the main, probably in English manufactures or in wine from the Azores or the Canaries, a permissible article of direct import under the navigation acts. Other important exports for this transatlantic trade were lumber and naval stores, though New England herself gradually came to depend for naval stores upon

the Carolinas. Frequently the voyage to Europe resulted in the sale of the ship itself.

     Probably no branch of New England commerce has had a more direct and evident influence upon her history than the trade with the West Indies. Here again the fisheries furnished a large part of the material for export, especially the “refuse fish” then thought good enough for the West Indian slaves. With fish went lumber, horses, provisions, and some British manufactures. From the West Indies the New-Englanders took in return various tropical products, including sugar, and especially large quantities of molasses for the distilleries of Massachusetts and Rhode Island. This commerce was closely connected with the rapid development of the African slave-trade; for, as has been seen, New England rum was sent to the Guinea coast for slaves, and these in turn found their best market in the plantation colonies, especially in the West Indies. Newport especially profited largely by this trade.¹

     Philadelphia, the chief commercial port of the middle colonies, followed to a limited extent the lines of New England commerce, though her exports were somewhat different. Grain formed an important article of export from the middle colonies to the West Indies, the Azores, and even

to southern Europe. Beef, pork, and lumber were also exported, and, as in the case of the New-Englanders, the ship itself was sometimes sold. Return voyages brought clothing and other manufactures from England; sugar, molasses, and other tropical products-often Spanish money from the West Indies. So large a share of the latter, however, was paid for European goods that little remained in the colonies. New York’s trade was similar to that of Philadelphia, though her export of peltry was more important and her ship-building less so. One other branch of trade in which the northern colonies were engaged was that of bringing logwood from Central America to be re-exported to European markets.¹

     There are no accurate statistics as to the trade of the continental colonies, but some figures furnished by the Board of Trade in 1721 will illustrate the general situation. The annual exports from England to the continental colonies were then valued at about £430,000, of which a little over two-thirds were British goods and the rest foreign articles re-exported. Woollen goods constituted roughly one-half of the whole value of British articles exported. Next in importance stood wrought iron and nails. The imports from the continental colonies were valued, roughly, at £300,000, and of this amount about one-half was tobacco. Next in

order came naval stores, rice, and peltry. More than three-fourths of the total English imports from the continental colonies came from Virginia, Maryland, and the Carolinas, and a much larger amount (more than two-thirds of all the imports from the American colonies) came from the British sugar islands of the West Indies. Of the English export trade a much larger proportion went to the sugar islands than to either the northern or the southern group of continental colonies. In the aggregate trade of England with the continental colonies she exported more largely than she imported, this condition being due to the northern colonies, which sent no great staples directly to England and paid for their English manufactures indirectly through their ship-building and carrying trade and their commerce with the West Indies and southern Europe.

     These figures show the greater value of England’s direct trade with the West Indies as compared with that carried on with the northern colonies; and the same fact is emphasized by the statistics of shipping. The tonnage to the British West Indies was more than twice as large as that to New England, New York, and Pennsylvania combined, and somewhat larger than the aggregate for the Chesapeake colonies and the Carolinas. These facts explain the emphasis given by British colonial administrators to West Indian interests. It is to be remembered also that the trade of the northern colonies, especially that of New England, was carried on largely

in their own shipping, while that of the south and the West Indies was in the hands of British merchants.¹

     Even from the mercantilist point of view there were decided advantages in the trade between the northern colonies and the West Indies; it supplied the sugar islands with provisions and lumber on cheaper terms than would otherwise have been possible, and it enabled the New-Englanders and Pennsylvanians to buy more freely of English manufactures. After 1713, however, the British West Indian planters grew jealous of the trade between their continental countrymen and the French and Dutch islands. The French relaxed their old restrictions, and their sugar production developed rapidly until it began to displace the British product in European markets. The New-Englanders also found that they could buy their sugar and molasses more cheaply from the French and Dutch. In 1721 the Board of Trade called attention to this undesirable form of New England enterprise, and in 1731 the sugar-planters and the merchants trading to the West Indies petitioned Parliament for relief. In the latter year a bill for this purpose passed the House of Commons but was dropped in the House of Lords.

     During the next two years the question was much debated, but the final outcome was the molasses act of 1733, imposing prohibitory duties on foreign

sugar, molasses, and rum imported into the English colonies.¹ The friends of the bill emphasized the value of the sugar colonies as a market for English manufactures and for African slaves and the large amount of shipping employed in the trade. They asserted also that the trade of the continental colonies was chiefly responsible for the too successful competition of the foreign sugar islands in Europe. The northern colonies claimed that the British West Indies could not meet the whole American demand in addition to that of the mother-country, dwelt on the importance of their own shipping interests and of the rum industry, and insisted that the unfortunate condition of the British sugar plantations was largely due to improvidence and mismanagement. Finally, they argued that it was the trade with the French islands which enabled them to pay for British manufactures. The act was passed, but it involved so serious a disturbance of the natural course of trade that it was systematically violated.²

     Of great importance, but extremely difficult to estimate even approximately, was the intercolonial coasting trade. Thus the middle colonies sent bread-stuffs to New England as well as to South Carolina. A large part of the coasting trade was carried on in New England vessels, which supplied

the southerners not only with their own domestic commodities but with the proceeds of the European and West Indian trades, North Carolina in particular being largely dependent upon them for contact with the outside world.¹

     The intercolonial wars gave rise directly or indirectly to several abnormal forms of colonial enterprise. On the border-line between war and commerce, technically legal yet tending always to degenerate into distinctly criminal courses, was privateering. The privateer had a regular commission from his government to prey upon the enemy’s commerce, thus enabling him to combine patriotism with private advantage. The peace of Utrecht closed for a time the opportunity for legitimate privateering, but it developed again on a large scale upon the outbreak of war with Spain in 1739. Rhode Island merchants were conspicuous for their investments in this form of business.

     In time of peace the more reckless privateersmen were easily drawn into piracy. Just before and after the revolution of 1689 piracy was very common, and in many of the colonial seaports was looked upon somewhat indulgently by the local merchants, who were glad to have the pirate’s money without inquiring too closely as to its source.

Much was said about the laxity of the proprietary governors in this respect, but one of the most notorious offenders was the royal governor Fletcher, of New York. To remedy this crying evil the British piracy act of 1699 was passed, and in the succeeding years pirates were severely dealt with in several of the colonies. The best-known piratical adventurer of this period was Captain William Kidd, who, under the auspices of Lord Bellomont, governor of New York, and the great Lord Chancellor Somers, set out to capture pirates, but ended by turning pirate, or half pirate, himself, and thus brought scandal on his distinguished patrons. He was finally arrested by order of Bellomont, sent to England for trial, and executed there, upon somewhat inadequate evidence, for the crimes of piracy and murder. In 1704 some pirates were executed in Boston, affording a grewsome entertainment to Samuel Sewall and his fellow-citizens.¹

     The climax of American piracy was reached at the close of the War of the Spanish Succession, when the forces of the pirates were swelled by accessions from former privateersmen. Their chief haunts during this period were the Bahamas, which had for a time fallen into a state of anarchy; and the convenient inlets and rivers of North Carolina.

     Two of these maritime desperadoes who stand out above their fellows are Teach, or Thatch, sometimes known as Blackbeard, and Steve Bonnet, formerly a respectable inhabitant of Barbadoes. The leading proprietary officials of North Carolina were strongly suspected of complicity with the pirates, and finally, after a succession of outrages all along the coast, the neighboring governments were forced to act. In 1718, Governor Spotswood, of Virginia, sent an expedition into North Carolina, which in a pitched battle killed Thatch and some of his accomplices. In the same year the South Carolina government sent a similar expedition to the Cape Fear River, where after another desperate encounter Bonnet and his crew were captured. Bonnet himself and most of his followers were soon after tried and executed. Before the year ended, another engagement off Charleston resulted in the capture and execution of several other desperadoes. These and other vigorous measures soon made piracy a more exceptional feature of maritime life.¹

     The extent of the colonial trade carried on in violation of the navigation acts has been and still is a matter of controversy. Some provisions of these acts were undoubtedly well observed, as, for instance, the rule limiting trade with the colonies to English (including colonial-built) vessels. It is also generally agreed that the molasses act, which

attempted to break up colonial trade with the foreign sugar colonies, was systematically violated. Probably the export of enumerated articles was in the main confined to England, as the law provided, though there was said to be some illicit exportation of Virginia and North Carolina tobacco from the ill-guarded coasts of the latter colony, with the convenient aid of New England traders. The greatest doubt exists as to the enforcement of the clause requiring tfiat all European goods should be imported by way of England. During the two decades following the revolution of 1689 the colonists were charged with carrying on a large amount of this illegal import trade; but something must undoubtedly be allowed for the zealous efforts of royal agents to discredit the chartered governments, and something, perhaps, for friction in the inauguration of a new system.

     After the peace of Utrecht there appear from time to time references to illegal imports from Europe. Thus Thomas Amory, of Boston, wrote to one of his correspondents in 1721, “If you have a Captain you can confide in, you will find it easy to import all kinds of goods from the Streights, France, and Spain, although prohibited.” The famous Peter Faneuil was also involved in the illicit trade in European goods, and disposed to resent any excessive strictness on the part of admiralty judges. A fair general conclusion would seem to be that though there was much illegal trading, the volume

of this illicit trade, with the exception of that carried on with the West Indies in defiance of the molasses act, was not relatively large, and that the eighteenth-century colonists drew the great bulk of their European goods from English ports.¹

     One of the most perplexing of colonial problems was that of securing an adequate medium of exchange. At the close of the seventeenth century the chief metallic money of the colonists was the Spanish silver piece-of-eight. This Spanish silver was not only limited in quantity, but it was subject to a confusing variety of ratings in the different colonies, and the efforts of the home government to regulate it were not successful. Nearly all the colonies during this century depended largely upon various systems of barter or payment in kind. Thus Virginia had her tobacco currency and Massachusetts her “country pay,” or payment in commodities at certain fixed values. In North Carolina this primitive barter system continued until the middle of the eighteenth century.¹

     The want of a satisfactory circulating medium was aggravated by the financial difficulties of the colonial governments. In the colonies as in England the wars with France subjected the financial

resources of the state to an unusual strain, which they could hardly meet by the immediate imposition of taxes. From one or the other of these motives, or both of them together, paper money was issued by all of the colonies.

     The first bills were issued by Massachusetts to meet the expenses of Phips’s disastrous expedition against Quebec in 1690. Though declared “in value equal to money,” they depreciated rapidly; but during the next twenty years the issues were kept within moderate limits, and the notes were brought for a considerable time to par with coin. The first serious tendency to inflation appeared near the close of Queen Anne’s War. The volume of bills was then swelled by numerous emissions, while credit was also impaired by postponing the taxes necessary for their redemption.

     All the New England colonies were led to the same course by financial necessities and the real or supposed need of a circulating medium. Efforts to check the depreciation by legal-tender legislation and other forcing measures all failed. New issues were made to replace the old; but the “new tenor” bills only added new rates of depreciation, bringing great hardships not only to the creditor class, but to all recipients of fixed incomes. In 1749 Massachusetts was able to restore her currency to a specie basis; but her neighbors continued to suffer from a depreciated currency, Rhode Island having a particularly bad record in this respect.

     During Queen Anne’s War, and as a direct result of the financial burdens imposed by the French and Indian wars, paper currencies were issued by New York and both the Carolinas. They were largely increased afterwards, with the same results of extreme depreciation, which could not be effectively checked by legal tender and forcing clauses. Virginia was much more conservative during this period, issuing no bills until 1755. Maryland and the middle colonies, except New York, were comparatively prudent also, though the Pennsylvanians were thoroughly convinced of the desirability of paper money, and their most eminent citizen, Benjamin Franklin, early distinguished himself in its defence.¹

     One of the worst phases of the paper-money movement was the “bank,” a natural product of a time when the nature and limitations of credit were not clearly understood, a period marked by such disastrous experiments as the French “Mississippi Scheme” and the “South Sea Bubble,” in which many prominent English politicians were involved. A colonial “bank” has been described as “simply a batch of paper money” lent out either by the government or by a private company. In either case there was little or no specie value behind the

notes, and usually very poor security for the payment either of the principal or of the interest pledged. Such “banks” were undertaken by colonial governments in New England and elsewhere, often with disastrous results. The best-known of these schemes was the Massachusetts “Land Bank” of 1740, a private institution which, however, became a conspicuous factor in provincial politics. Only an insignificant part of the stock of this bank was subscribed in cash, and for the rest commodities of various kinds might be accepted. The bank then issued notes which added perceptibly to the confusion of currency in the province, until Parliament put a stop to its operations.¹

     Throughout the eighteenth century the British government showed its hostility to paper-money issues and tried to check them in various ways, especially by instructions to the governors. These instructions were, however, frequently evaded or disobeyed; for governors could be brought to terms by the assemblies refusing to vote salaries or withholding money for urgent public needs. The colonists themselves were divided on the question, as, for instance, in South Carolina, where there was a sharp contest between the planters who wished a paper currency and the merchants who opposed it. In a similar division in Massachusetts the conservative

business interests finally secured the withdrawal of the paper altogether. Parliament also interested itself in the question, and, after some previous inquiries and resolutions, passed in 1751 an act prohibiting the issue of paper money in New England, except in certain clearly defined cases. This legislation was not extended to the other colonies until 1764.¹

     Notwithstanding unfortunate experiments of various kinds, the colonies were on the whole prosperous. Prosperity was probably more generally diffused in New England and Pennsylvania than elsewhere; but in every colony there were many persons who could, according to the standards of the time, command the material comforts and luxuries of life. In the south the most substantial wealth was probably to be found in Charleston; but a considerable number of the Virginian planters, though often land-poor and in debt, were able to secure for themselves luxuries of food, clothing, and furniture. Such a man, for instance, was William Byrd. Ir New England there were prosperous merchants, such as Peter Faneuil, or Thomas Amory, who, after a broad experience in various parts of the world, settled in Boston in 1719 and wrote of his new home, “People live handsomely here and without fear of anything.” Philadelphia and New York also gave to intelligent observers like the Swedish Kalm and the English Burnaby the impression of comfort and

prosperity. Burnaby, who visited Philadelphia in 1760, spoke of it with admiration, observing its substantial public buildings and its handsome streets. A few years earlier Kalm wrote rather extravagantly that “its fine appearance, good regulations, agreeable situation, natural advantages, trade, riches and power, are by no means inferior to those of any, even of the most ancient, towns in Europe.”¹