180 PARLIAMENTARY COLBERTISM
complained bitterly of the disadvantages under which they
carried on their business’. This was exactly a case where it
might have been expected that Government would interfere
bo prevent the hostile competition of the colonies with an
established home industry; but no steps were taken in the
matter. American shipbuilding was allowed to develop®
under the stimulus it received from the opportunity of em-
ployment in English trade. This is all the more surprising
as there would obviously have been special difficulty in
obtaining the use of colonial ships for the purposes of naval
warfare or transport. In 1707 Parliament abandoned any
attempt to press colonial seamen for the navy’; the de-
velopment of shipbuilding in the plantations did but little
for the increase of the power of England on the seas, and
colonial shipping was sometimes employed in a manner that
was detrimental to English commerce®.
The advantage which accrued to the shipping industries
in the northern colonies, doubtless did much to allay the
resentment that might otherwise have been felt at the
British provisions of the Navigation Act. The only serious dif
tof ficulty appears to have arisen in connection with the
Colonial attempts to bring the plantations into line with the Whig
rourse policy of avoiding all commercial intercourse with France.
A.D. 1689
—1776.
in New
England.
built for the Coale and other Trade, which were of great use to his Majestie in
time of Warr and a Nursery for able Seamen; but by the Discouragement that
Trade hath ever since laid under, occasioned chiefely by the freedome which
foreigne Shipps and Vessels, bought and brought inte this Kingdome, have
enjoyed in the Coale and other Inland Trade, equall to that of English built
Shipps, the Merchants, Owners, and others, have not beene able to build as
formerly, which hath caused many of our English Shippwrights, Calkers, and
Seamen, to seeke their Imployments abroad, whereby the Building trade is not
onely wholly lost in severall of the aforementioned places, and in others very
much decayed, but alsoe the Importation of Timber, Plank, Hemp, Pitch, Tarr,
Iron, Masts, Canvas, and other Commodities used in building and fitting out
Shipps, are greatly lessened, to the apparent prejudice of his Majestyes Customs,
the losse of a considerable Imployment for Shipping, and consequently of all other
Trades depending thereupon, to the too great Advantage of Forreigne Nations.”
1 Ashley, Surveys, 313.
2 Tord, Industrial Experiments, 105: Weeden. Economic and Social History.
I. 643.
8 6 Anne, c. 87, § 9.
4 Compare the privateering in the Indian Ocean. See above, p. 271. King
James II., who was particularly interested in maintaining the East Indian trade,
taqued a proclamation in 1688 against American privateers. Brit. Mus. 21. h. 3 (24),
