PART II

COLONIAL AMERICANS

CHAPTER XVI

THE STRUGGLE TO SAVE SELF-GOVERNMENT

(1660-1690)

I. THE COLONIES AS A WHOLE

132. The years 1660-1690 are a distinct period in colonial development. The first mark of the period is a vast expansion of territory. In 1660 the English held two patches of coast, one, about the Chesapeake, the other, east of the Hudson. The two districts were separated by hundreds of miles of wilderness and by Dutch and Swedish possessions. And for more than twenty years no new English colony had been founded.

Thirty years later the English colonies formed an unbroken band from the Penobscot to the Savannah. To the south of Virginia the Carolinas had been added (1663); to the north of Maryland appeared the splendid colony of Pennsylvania (1681); while the rest of the old intermediate region had become English by conquest (New York, New Jersey, and Delaware). All the colonies, too, had broadened their area of settlement toward the interior. Population rose from 60,000 in 1660 to 250,000 in 1690.

133. This transformation, from isolated patches of settlement into a continuous colonial empire, brought home to English rulers the need of a uniform colonial policy. Charles I had had a "Colonial Council," but it exercised little real control. In 1655, when Cromwell took Jamaica from Spain, one of his officials drew up certain "Overtures touching a Councill

§ 136]

THE NAVIGATION ACTS

115

to bee erected for foraigne Plantations." This paper suggested various measures to make the colonies "understand... that their Head and Centre is Heere." After the Restoration, Charles II incorporated much of the document in his "Instructions" to a new colonial council (§ 134).

134. This "Council for Foreign Plantations" contained many of the greatest men of the time. It was instructed to study the state of the plantations and the colonial policies of other countries; to secure copies of the colonial charters and laws; and to have a general oversight of all colonial matters. In particular it was to endeavor "that the severall collonies bee drawn.. into a more certaine, civill, and uniform waie of Government and distribution of publick Justice, in which they are at present scandalously defective."

In 1674 the first "Council for Foreign Plantations" was succeeded by the "Lords of Trade," and in 1696 by the "Board of Trade and Plantations." During the period that we are now considering, the Council was hard-working, honest, and well-meaning; but it was ignorant of the affairs, and out of touch with the people, that it was trying to rule. It strove to get three results: (1) uniformity and economy in colonial administration; (2) better military defense; and (3) new commercial regulations (§ 138).

135. European countries valued colonies (1) as a source of goods not produced at home (§ 39), and (2) as a sure market for home manufactures. So each colonizing country adopted "navigation acts" to restrict the trade of its colonies exclusively to itself. Without this prospect, it would not have seemed worth while to found colonies at all. By modern standards, all these commercial systems were absurd and tyrannical; but the English system was more enlightened, and far less selfish and harsh, than that of Holland or France or Spain.

136. At the other end of the scale was Spain.1 For two hundred years all commerce from Spanish America could pass

1 This paragraph is condensed from the admirable account in Bernard Moses' Establishment of Spanish Rule in America, 20-26 and 285–292.

to the outer world only through Spain, and through only one Spanish port,-first Seville, and afterward Cadiz. Worse still, until 1748, goods could be imported from Europe through only the one favored port in Spain, and (for all the wide-lying New Spain in North and South America) to only two American ports, and at special times. Two fleets sailed each year from Spain, one to Porto Bello on the Isthmus, for all the South American trade; the other to Vera Cruz in Mexico. All other trade, even between the separate Spanish colonies, was prohibited under penalty of death. From the most distant districts, Chile or Argentina, - goods for export had to be carried to Porto Bello to meet the annual fleet. Then was held a fortydays' fair, to exchange the European imports for precious metals, tropical woods, and hides.

By this arrangement, in many parts of South America, the prices of European goods were increased to five or six times the natural amount, while the products with which the colonies paid were robbed of value by the cost of transportation. The cattle raised on the vast plains of the Argentine could reach a lawful market only by being carried across the continent to Peru, thence by sea to Panama, again across the Isthmus to Porto Bello, and (one chance a year) from that port to Seville. In the early years of the eighteenth century, at Buenos Aires, an ox was worth a dollar, and a sheep three or four cents, - and values had risen to this point only because some contraband trade had sprung up, in spite of the terrible penalties.

To go from Spain to America, except to a few favored places, was not merely to go into exile, but to renounce civilization. The restrictions on trade prevented the colonists from starting with the achievements of European civilization, and drove them back, in many cases, to the barbarism of the natives.

137. Compared with that sort of thing, England's policy was modern. Her statesmen did not aim, consciously, to benefit the home country at the expense of the plantations. They strove to make the parts of the empire helpful to one another, so that the empire as a whole might be self-supporting, independent of

the rest of the world in industry and economics. In large measure they wished this system of tariff "protection" for the