Second in a Series: A Civics Lesson

 

All beginnings are random: how the Navigation Acts proved England thought of its colonies as children in its vast empire.

 

What opinion did the colonies have of themselves?

By 1680, the colonial settlements had persevered through high mortality rates due to the privations of nature: starvation, disease, and attack by indigenous peoples. Unlike the sparse French settlements in North America that were comprised mostly of Canadian traders, trappers, and frontiersmen, colonial settlements grew and thrived due to the social and religious importance placed on family structure and self-reliance.  

In addition to continuing immigration from Europe, the mortality rate had dropped and birth rates had risen. Colonial population in 1680 had grown to 150,000.  

Three generations later in 1730, the population was 650,000. Husbandry flourished. British America was primarily a land of many small farms. Neighborhoods had also formed as shopkeepers, laborers, and seafaring workers settled into thriving villages along the New England seaboard. Tradesmen and shipowners rose to prominence and employed others.

The middle colonies of New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and New Jersey also grew in population and industry. There were vast forests and seaports with access to the Atlantic. Great rivers allowed settlers to move further inland. Philadelphia had become the largest city in the New World by the time of the Revolution.   

In the southern colonies Maryland also was primarily small farms. In Virginia and the Carolinas, not only small farms and towns existed, but large plantations formed along rivers and coastal regions. Cotton, tobacco, rice, and indigo yielded great profit for wealthy entrepreneurs who owned slaves. Georgia had its own unique story of immigrants who were not only criminals, but men who could not pay their debts in England. With the consent of the king, they were freed from prison and imported into Georgia in the New World.

What does this regional growth of population and industry have to do with the political revolution that lay ahead?     

First, the colonists were unfettered by the old aristocratic systems of Europe and could rise or fall based on their ingenuity and willingness to work. The availability of land and the independent spirit that prevailed in America offered a free man an opportunity that would have been unheard of for his class of people in the old world.  

He could take up land by survey or by "tomahawk right" and work his farm as he pleased until the end of his days. Or, he could sell his land and relocate his family to the west when adventure called so long as he was willing to accept the dangers and hardships.  

The colonist who chose to move farther west into rural upstate New York or into the Pennsylvania wilderness typified that American pioneer spirit of freedom when a man simply wanted to be left alone to live his life with his family as he saw fit.   

Second, the colonists were too far away from the courts of Europe to care about the affairs of aristocracy and kings. For most of colonial history, the local elected leaders lived in the growing towns and got along well enough with the king-appointed colonial governors and council members, even cultivating friendships.   

Third, the colonists could worship within the tradition of their family, with most worship services encouraging family life and fellowship within their community.  

What opinion did England have of the colonies?

The situation might have appeared orderly in the colonies, but trouble was brewing in England. The kings of England as we have said received their power "directly from God" to rule the mighty British empire. This empire had become mighty in the first place due to commerce, colonization, supremacy of the seas, and victories in war.     

The King was powerful, but so was the strong merchant/military class that arose from the Middle Ages in Europe. These burghers, businessmen, and generals intended to keep their power by influencing their elected representation in Parliament.

The profits of commerce replenished the purses of the English monarchs, the aristocrats in Parliament’s House of Lords, the merchant electors, and the members they elected to Parliament’s House of Commons. This system had developed over centuries.  

Parliament had begun passing Navigation Acts in the 1600s and 1700s to protect its commerce. The Navigation Acts required all goods produced in the colonies for export to markets in Europe to be sold in English markets by English agents. In addition, any European goods the colonists wanted to import had to be purchased directly from a factor in England, not from the country that actually produced the product.  

This not only created a British trade monopoly on all commerce to and from the colonies, but the acts required all colonial commerce to be transported in more profitable British shipping.

Parliament’s various Navigation Acts were designed to secure the profit margin for English merchants, not for colonial merchants. Large colonial exports were affected: shipbuilding, lumber, the dried codfish industry in New England, and tobacco in Virginia.   

The acts also affected colonists in their daily lives. For example, a hatter in Boston by law had to sell his products at wholesale in England. The "middle man" in England then might re-sell the hats to fill an order in Philadelphia. It was possible for a crate of hats to be shipped 3,000 miles across the ocean to England only to be sent 3,000 miles back to another colony or even to the same colony. The hat originally made by the hatter in Boston might travel 6,000 miles to be sold to a customer in Salem, Massachusetts 25 miles away.

The Navigation Acts had largely been ignored because England was distracted by its wars with France. Also, English authorities were too far away to enforce the laws. Since the profit was greater than the risk, colonial merchants bought and sold directly between the colonies. They exported colonial goods where there were markets willing to trade and imported products such as molasses from the nearby British Caribbean Islands. They also transported in their own ships...all to avoid the English merchant middleman.  

Technically it was smuggling in defiance of English law. American ship owners like Boston’s John Hancock regularly participated in this kind of activity.

What event changed this happy situation?

In 1763 the Peace of Paris officially ended the Seven Years War in Europe and the French and Indian War in British America. England emerged victor over France and her allies. King George III looked at the national debt of 133 million pounds, a gigantic amount at the time, and asked his Prime Minister George Grenville how this debt would be paid.   

George Grenville no doubt believed as did his king, the king’s ministers, and most members of Parliament, that the colonists were, in the words of the Chancellor of the Exchequer Charles Townshend, "...children of England’s planting, nourished by the indulgence of the mother country until they were grown to a good degree of strength and opulence.”   

The colonists did not see themselves as "children of England's planting," but this prevailing attitude came in handy when the king asked how the debt would be paid. Someone had to pay the debt!

What were the colonies doing over there anyway? It was colonial land and peace that had been secured for them at great cost to the mother country. Was it not the colonies that had benefitted in that war? How should the colonies participate in paying the cost of that war?   

In the upcoming third article in this series, we will watch as Parliament works overtime to debate and devise plans to give the king his answer.  

To learn more about Convention of States and to become involved, click on www.conventionofstates.com.