The Industrial Revolution

Bibliographic data

Monograph

Identifikator:: 1027928145

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-159926

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Cunningham, William http://d-nb.info/gnd/128907487

Title:: The Industrial Revolution

Place of publication:: Cambridge

Publisher:: The University Press

Year of publication:: 1922

Scope:: xxii S., S. 404-886

Digitisation:: 2021

Collection:: Economics Books

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THE REVOLT OF THE COLONIES 587 them from competing with the Mother Country in other A.D. 1689 markets. But the statesmen of the period appear to have ~27%5, thought that it was easier to prevent these industries from coming into existence at all, than to control them when and to once they were planted, as they had tried to do, not very tal successfully, with the manufacture of hats:, With this dunes view they endeavoured to prevent the migration of skilled artisans? to the colonies, and to reserve the colonial market as a monopoly for English producers. During the period of Whig ascendancy these principles were applied in turn to she woollen trade®, and to iron-manufactures, for which one or other of the colonies were admirably adapted. The policy of stimulating English industry was pursued with ruthless consistency, and constituted an economic grievance from which all the colonists suffered somewhat, and which many of them restnted. Whether the economic grievances were great or small, we but _ can hardly regard them as the determining cause, when we American look either at the incident which brought about the breach, or ame at the line along which the cleavage took place. Economic determine considerations had very little to do with the Boston tea party‘; the colonists resented the exclusive privileges of the East India Company, but the disabilities of which they complained extended to all private shippers in Great Britain as well. Nor was the new duty in anv way oppressive. 1 This industry was carried on in London by a very limited body, who probably kept prices up; the London hatters managed to get an Act in their favour (5 Geo. iI. ec. 22), but this American industry appears to have been the only colonial manufacture that developed enough to compete with the mother country. Beer, wp. cit. 82 % A stringent measure was passed in 1718 which prohibited artisans from going across the sea at all, and insisted that those who had done so should return (6 Geo. I c. 27, An Act to prevent the inconvenience arising from seducing drtificers in the Manufactures of Great Britain into foreign parts). Compare the South Sea Kidnapper, by J. B. (1730), for Spanish attempts to entice away our artisans. See also below, p. 755. 8 Beer, op. cit. 78. ¢ “One fact is clear and indisputable. The publick and avowed origin of this quarrel was on taxation. This quarrel has indeed brought on new disputes on new questions; but certainly the least bitter, and the fewest of all, on the trade laws. To judge which of the two be the real, radical cause of quarrel, we have to see whether the commercial dispute did, in order of time, precede the dispute on :axation? There is not a shadow of evidence for it.” Burke, Speech on Con- nliation with America. in Works. 1. 193.

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