174 PARLIAMENTARY COLBERTISM 
A.D. 1689 
—1776. 
shemselves. The illicit trade between the West Indian 
islands and Mexico! was valued by the colonists because it 
enabled them to procure quantities of silver? with which they 
paid for European goods’. But the trade declined in the 
latter part of the eighteenth century; the Spaniards pursued 
a more liberal policy towards the settlements in Mexico, so 
that they had less motive for engaging in smuggling‘. The 
English on the other hand began to enforce the Navigation 
Laws® more strictly in 1764, and seized the Spanish vessels 
trading between the English islands and Mexico. Next year 
the English endeavoured to rectify this mistake by establish- 
ing in Jamaica four free ports, into which foreign vessels 
were allowed to import the produce of foreign colonies®. 
Unfortunately however, the English officials kept a list of 
the names of those who imported bullion from Mexico; the 
Spanish Government succeeded in obtaining a copy of this list 
and severely punished some traders for the illegal exportation”, 
and incon- There was another highly profitable trade which con- 
t . . i 
mechs nected the West Indian islands, not only with the Spanish 
slave trade, rainland and with some of the English plantations on the 
mainland, but with Africa as well. The African slave trade 
appears to have been encouraged, if not devised, from motives 
1 The English claimed a right to cut logwood at Campeachy, but the Spaniards 
repudiated it. Parl. Hist. viri. 684. 
3 F, Hall, Importance of the British Plantations in America to this Kingdom 
(1731), p. 41. 
8 The colonies had some difficulty in finding suitable returns for their 
purchases from England; hence the advantage from cultivating new products. 
The introduction of rice into Carolina, where it was immediately successful, 
helped the southern colonists to discharge their indebtedness. F. Hall, Import- 
ance of British Plantations, p. 18. Beer, op. cit. p. 52. 
s Edwards, History of the West Indies, 1. 293. 
8 The Navigation Act of 1660 was amended by 15 C. IL ¢. 7 by the insertion of 
a clause which had a very important effect on the West Indies. It enacted that 
in order to make England a staple, both for colonial products and for supplying 
the plantations with manufactures, all European goods for the use of the planta- 
Lions were to be fetched from England, Wales or Berwick, and from nowhere else. 
This appears to bave been aimed at the French, and the wine trade, rather than 
at the Dutch. It practically repealed the clause which allowed foreign countries 
to ship their own products to English colonies. and it cut off Ireland from direct 
trade with the colonies. 
6 Foreign manufactures and produce of British colonies which served as the 
raw material for British manufactures were not included in this permission. 
3 Geo. III. c. 49. 
* Edwards, op. cit. I. 295. 
as a depot 
for Mexi- 
can trade