558

THE NATURE AND CAUSES OE

effect, and least of all that part which established the exclu-sive trade to the colonies. Both the colonies and their tradewere inconsiderable then in comparison of what they noware. The island of Jamaica was an unwholesome desert,little inhabited, and less cultivated. New York and NewJersey were in the possession of the Dutch : the half of St.Christopher’s in that of the French . The island of Antigua,the two Carolinas, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Nova Sco-tia, were not planted. Virginia, Maryland, and New Eng-land were planted ; and though they were very thriving co-lonies, yet there was not, perhaps, at that time, either in Eu-rope or America , a single person who foresaw or even sus-pected the rapid progress which they have since made inwealth, population, and improvement. The island of Barba-does, in short, was the only British colony of any conse-quence of which the condition at that time bore any resem-blance to what it is at present. The trade of the colonies, ofwhich England , even for some time after the act of naviga-tion, enjoyed but a part (for the act of navigation was notvery strictly executed till several years after it was enacted),could not at that time be the cause of the great trade ofEngland , nor of the great naval power which was supportedby that trade. The trade which at that time supported thatgreat naval power was the trade of Europe , and of the coun-tries which lie round the Mediterranean sea. But the sharewhich Great Britain at present enjoys of that trade could notsupport any such great naval power. Had the growing tradeof the colonies been left free to all nations, whatever shareof it might have fallen to Great Britain, and a very consider-able share would probably have fallen to her, must have beenall an addition to this great trade of which she was before inpossession. In consequence of the monopoly, the increaseof the colony trade has not so much occasioned an additionto the trade which Great Britain had before, as a total changein its direction.

Secondly, this monopoly has necessarily contributed tokeep up the rate of profit in all the different branches of Bri-tish trade higher than it naturally would have been, had allnations been allowed a free trade to the British colonies.

The monopoly of the colony trade, as it necessarily drewtowards that trade a greater proportion of the capital of GreatBritain than what would have gone to it of its own accord ;so by the expulsion of all foreign capitals it necessarily re-