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.