114 PARLIAMENTARY COLBERTISM 
A.D. 1659 in England who were indifferent to the existence of the 
"colonies, and who only approved of them in so far as they 
supplemented the resources of the English realm as a whole. 
There was a general consensus of opinion that the colonies 
should not be permitted to do anything that would under- 
mine the power of the mother country; and the Whigs 
asthey especially insisted that the growing communities should 
afraid of mot enter into hostile competition with the industry and 
0 Fone trade from which the revenue of the mother country 
tition with wag largely drawn. Hence there was room for much 
country, economic jealousy of the American plantations and of 
Ireland; this worked more or less strongly according as 
the products of the dependency interfered with those of 
England, or did not. There was no economic rivalry be- 
tween England and the West Indies or Virginia, as the 
sugar and tobacco they produced had not been grown at 
home. The Northern colonies, on the other hand, were well 
adapted, by climate and situation, to furnish some of the 
products which the mother country could and did supply. 
In the case of Ireland this was still more marked; for 
Englishmen had actual experience of being undersold, in 
the victualling trades and the woollen manufacture, by the 
inhabitants of that island. Scotland, less favoured as it 
is by climate and soil, excited no similar fears. The degrees 
of favour or disfavour shown to different members of the 
English economic system under Parliamentary rule, can be 
traced to the application of this principle of refusing to 
tolerate hostile competition with the products and industry 
of the predominant partner. 
Not only were the sister kingdom and the colonies in- 
juriously affected by the economic doctrines of the Whigs, 
orof any but also by their political jealousies. Their bitterness 
intercourse against France, and the success which they achieved in 
ae preventing the resumption of trade with that country after 
the Treaty of Utrecht, were distinctly baneful to many of 
the members of the English system. Scotland and Ireland 
had long had a profitable trade with France, and they were 
forced to relinquish it, or to have recourse to illicit methods 
of conducting it. The Northern colonies suffered too, for