67
of agents, became a standing evil. They were an evil
both to the colonies to which they owed but did not
discharge responsibilities, and to England where a
West India interest was created, as powerful as the
Nabobs, probably more so, and still more tainted
inasmuch as the basis of West Indian wealth and
influence was slavery and the slave trade. The three
great cities of London, Liverpool and Bristol profited
by and supported the slave trade, and therefore backed
up the West India interest, which was bound up with
it. ‘The treaty of Utrecht in 1713, which gave to
Great Britain the contract, the Assiento, for supplying
Spanish America with slaves, confirmed her as a leader
in this wicked traffic, and it would be idle to look on
the West Indian colonies between 1713 and 1783 as
other than a sphete of trade, closely linked to West
Africa, a sphere of trade in its worst and grossest form.
In the beginning these West Indian islands had been
as much colonies as was New England : they were now
in strong contrast to the New England colonies ; and
meanwhile, through the perverse stupidity of the
British Government or owing to the criminal selfish-
ness of the merchants in the Mother Country, trade in
the case of the mainland North American colonies was
largely traffic contrary to the law. The navigation
acts, defensible during the infancy of the colonies,
became more and more indefensible when the colonies
had become adult communities, conscious of their con-
stantly growing strength and of what was due to them
as British citizens. Yet the more they grew, the more
the commercial restrictions imposed upon them by the
Mother Country were tightened, were resented, and
1688-1783