USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Professional and industrial history of Suffolk County, Massachusetts, Volume II > Part 3
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In October, Randolph reappeared in New England with the notifica- tion of the proceedings against the charter. He brought, also, a " Declaration " from the king, promising that the proceedings should not be pressed to their final stage, if " the corporation of the Massachu- setts Bay " should make full submission, and resign itself to the royal pleasure. This the court of assistants was ready to do; but the deputies, who more directly represented the people, were not so subservient, and refused to concur. They made a noble stand for their liberty, and for the cause of religion, which, they felt, was bound up with it. " It is better," they said, "to suffer, than to sin and suffer too." On the commercial question involved, we quote a paragraph from an elaborate paper, prepared, perhaps, by Thomas Danforth, the deputy-governor, who ably maintained the popular cause: "If his Majesty should pro- hibit trade with other plantations, will not he have the worst of it? The people can make a shift to live poorly without much trade; for here is wool, flax, hemp, iron, and many other useful things, and hands enough to make them up for use, besides many ships and vessels which will venture abroad, and some possibly may and will return home in safety, and bring supply of what is absolutely wanted." These men were running tremendous risks; but in a contest for liberty, on the part of a nation, actual or potential, can the stakes ever be too high?
By a change in the legal proceedings in London, which need not be considered here, the charter of Massachusetts Bay was vacated by a decree in the Court of Chancery, June 21, confirmed, October 23, 1684. Owing to the death of Charles, the accession of James, and other stir.
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ing events, a year and a half passed before Randolph, May 14, 1686, landed in Boston from the frigate Rose, with an exemplification of the judgment against the charter, and commissions for the officers of a new government. A provisional government was constituted, with Joseph Dudley as president, which continued until the closing month of the year, when Sir Edmund Andros arrived in Boston, bearing a commission for the government of all New England.
The government of Sir Edmund Andros lasted two years and four months, and was brought to an abrupt and violent end by the revolu- tion in New England which synchronized with the uprising at home, when the second James was driven from England and William and Mary were established on the British throne. "Again Englishmen were free and self-governed in the settlements of New England." During the years known as the inter-charter period, business enterprise must have become discouraged, and general trade, no doubt, languished, but we have no particular knowledge on the subject. The colonial ship- ping, however, would seem to have found its wonted employment, without intermission. We learn from one of Randolph's custom-house returns, that there were cleared at the port of Boston, in the half year between March 25 and September 29, 1688, seven vessels for England (all bound to London); one, for Fayal; two, for Madeira; one, for Hol- land; eleven, for Bilboa; one, for the Canary Islands; eighty-four, for Barbadoes, Jamaica, and the other West India Islands; thirty-two, for other North American colonies; one, for Portugal; and one for Cadiz. Almost all these vessels were owned in Boston, and were "plantation built." The coasters and the vessels trading to the West Indies were of thirty, twenty and ten tons' measurement. There is an instance of a vessel of only seven tons; her eargo consisted of " provisions " - one pipe of Madeira, two chests of Rhenish wine, some earthenware, and "a parcel of English goods." Within the same time there were entered at the port of Boston thirty-seven vessels from other North American colonies; eighty-nine, from the West Indies; twenty-one, from England; two, from Madeira; four, from Fayal; and one, from Ireland. This last vessel was of forty tons burden, and her only cargo was " thirty-one men and women servants, being bound for Virginia." We give the names of some of the vessels, with their captains, which passed the custom-house at this period :
Ketch Amity, John Bonner; ketch Mary and Elizabeth, of Charles- town, Nathaniel Cary; ship James, Job Prince; sloop Swan, John
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Nelson; ketch Abigail, Andrew Eliot; ketch Mary, Jonathan Balston ; bark Lydia, Benjamin Gillam; ship Society, ninety tons, four guns, ten men, Thomas Fayerweather; ship Nevis Merchant, Timothy Clarke; ship Swallow, John Eldridge; brig Sylvanus, of Charlestown, Bar- tholomew Green; ship Dolphin, John Foye; ketch Lark, John Walley; ketch Samuel, Giles Fifield; ketch Friendship, thirty tons, six men, Thomas Winsor ; ship Swan, Andrew Belcher; brigantine Supply, John Hunt; ship Rebecca, John Hobby; ketch George, Andrew Eliot; brig- antine Blessing, of Charlestown, Bartholomew Green; pink Endeavor, Simon Eyre; bark Trial, Barachiah Arnold; ship Friendship, one hundred tons, fourteen guns, John Ware; sloop Providence, John Rainsford.
When Edward Randolph returned to Boston with the exemplification of the judgment against the charter, he brought with the rest of his commissions one by which he assumed the duties of postmaster for New England. On the overthrow of the Andros government, Mr. Richard Wilkins, bookseller, was appointed postmaster in Boston, “to receive all letters and deliver them out; to receive one penny for cach single letter." In 1691, under William and Mary, a patent was granted to Thomas Neale, authorizing and empowering him "to erect, settle and establish within the chief parts of their Majesties' Colonies and Plantations in America an office or offices for the receiving and de- spatching letters and packets;" the grantee was to receive "such rates and sums of money as the planters should agree to give." Under this patent a "General Letter Office " was established in Boston in 1693, and Duncan Campbell received the appointment of deputy. As the receipts of the office fell short of the expenditures, the General Court granted Campbell an annual allowance of about five and twenty pounds.
The first governor under the new charter was Sir William Phipps, a native of Maine, who was brought up to the ship-carpenter's trade, and afterward followed the seas. It was said of him that he was "much better fitted to manage the crew of a man-of-war than to sit at the helm of the ship of state," but he was honest and true, and served his country to the best of his ability. He landed at Boston in May, 1692, and a few months later another man arrived here, whose training had been somewhat similar to his, and who afterward made a name for himself that will not soon be forgotten. This was Thomas Coram, the philanthropist. He came here at the charge of Thomas Hunt and
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others, London merchants, and under government permission and pro- tection, "for the better improvement of shipbuilding in these parts;" and he brought with him "divers shipwrights and other proper and necessary hands, and also a great quantity of merchandise." He built in Boston for a few years and then moved to Taunton, where he was not well treated, and in 1:03 returned to England. On the 1st of October, 1702, a register was issued to Captain Coram for the ship Resignation, of about two hundred tons, just built at Taunton, in which he was styled master, and he and Thomas Hunt were designated as owners.
In May, 1696, the Board of Trade and Plantations, the members of which were to be known as " the Lords of Trade," succeeded to the authority first exercised by the Council for Trade and Foreign Planta- tions, and afterwards by the plantation committees of the Privy Coun- cil. Let us look for a moment at the functions of this Board from the English point of view. Says Chalmers: "Of this respectable com- mission it has ever been the praise that they have exerted themselves as the guardians of the national interests, as the patrons of the colonies, as the supporters of the commercial system of Britain, though their sitecess hath not been always equal to their intentions and their efforts, because their powers were not proportionate to the extent of their will." But -- what was never taken into the account by this Board- there were colonial as well as national interests, and there were enter- prising colonists who wanted, not patronage, but the free exercise of their rights, and who were not disposed to square all their transactions by the artificial arrangements of a commercial system constructed without reference to their wants or wishes. It was not long before Massachusetts protested against the acts of the Board; and the mer- chants of Boston expressed their indignation at the restrictions which it would place upon their commerce, and insisted that "they were as much Englishmen as those in England, and had a right, therefore, to all the privileges which the people of England enjoyed." What the inevitable consequences of all this were to be we shall see in due time.
An order passed by the General Court June 15, 1696, provided for a market to be held in Boston every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, and no other days. A bell was to be rung at the opening of the mar- ket, at ? a. m. from March to May; at 6 a. m. from May until Sep- tember; and after that at 9 a. m. The market was to last till 6 p. m. between March and September, and until 4 p. m. during the rest of the
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year. No sales were to be made elsewhere. Fairs also were to be held annually on the last Tuesday in May and the last Tuesday in October, and to continue four days.
Lord Bellomont, the second governor under the new charter, an amiable nobleman, whose commission also ineluded New York, spent only one year in Boston. He observed closely, however, while he was here, and in writing home he said: " I believe one may venture to say there are more good vessels belonging to the town of Boston than to all Scotland and Ireland." He thus classed the ships belonging to the town: from one hundred to three hundred tons, twenty-five; one hun- dred tons and under, thirty-eight; brigantines, fifty ; ketehes, thirteen ; sloops, sixty-seven ; in all one hundred and ninety-three. This was for the year 1698. Some merchants at Boston, he said, with whom he discoursed about the trade of the province, "computed that Boston had four times the trade of New York." " The staple " in Massa- ehusetts was " the fishery." "They compute at Boston that they ship off fifty thousand quintals of dry fish every year, about three-quarters whereof is sent to Bilboa." There were sixty-three wharves in Boston and fourteen in Charlestown. The governor died in New York in 1101.
To provide further for the accommodation of the commerce of the town, Long Wharf was projected in 1707 by Oliver Noyes, Anthony Stoddard, John George, Daniel Oliver and others. Among the pro- prietors of this wharf in 1434, were James Allen, Samuel Sewall (son of Judge Sewall), Thomas Fitch, Jacob Wendell, Andrew Faneuil, John Gerrish, James Bowdoin, Thomas Hill, Andrew Oliver, Peter Oliver and Stephen Boutineau.
Governor Dudley reported to the Lords of Trade in 1709: "The people here clothe themselves with their own wool. New English goods are here sold at less than a hundred and fifty pounds per cent. advance, most goods more!" "They are proud enough to wear the best cloth of England, if chopping, sawing, and building of ships would pay for their clothes, and this method would double the sale of Eng- lish woolen manufactory presently." There was an exportation of codfish to Spain and elsewhere to the amount of thirty thousand pounds annually, and of mackerel to the West Indies to the amount of five thousand pounds. In a deseription of Boston by one Captain Uring, which we find in the Historical Magasinc (1866), it is said: " The in- habitants are very industrious, and carry on a very considerable trade
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to the Southern Plantations, viz., to all the Carribee Islands and Jamaica, which they supply with lumber as plank, boards, joyce and shingles for building houses, dried fish and salted mackerel, some beef and pork, pitch, tar and turpentine, tallow and Bay berry, wax candles, which last is made of wax extracted from a berry that grows in plenty in that country." The same traveller tells us that the dried codfish was commonly called " Poor Jack, or Baccalew."
The returns of the commerce of Boston for the three years ended June 4, 1717-the period which saw the close of Governor Dudley's ad- ininistration, and the beginning of Governor Shute's-show as follows: Cleared. for the West Indies, five hundred and eighteen ships, sloops, and other vessels; for the Bay of Campeachy, twenty-five vessels; for foreign plantations, fifty-eight vessels; for Newfoundland, forty-five vessels; for Europe, forty-three vessels; for Madeira, the Azores, etc., thirty-four vessels; for Great Britain, one hundred and forty-three vessels; for British plantations or the continent, three hundred and ninety vessels; and for "ports unknown," eleven vessels-an aggre- gate of twelve hundred and sixty-seven vessels (twelve hundred of them "plantation built "), amounting to sixty-two thousand seven hun- dred and eighty-eight tons of shipping, and employing between eight and nine thousand men. This was an average of more than twenty thousand tons for each year. During the same period the clearances at the port of New York averaged seven thousand tons annually. Barry quotes these figures from the New York Colonial Documents, but Chalmers is disposed to discredit them. There is no record of the general trade of the province at this period, apart from ocean com- meree, but it was large and profitable, and manufacturing industries were springing up, which will be described elsewhere in this work. The statesmen of England did not know what to make of this progress, and, not unnaturally from their point of view, thought that the pros- perity of the colonists should be made to contribute towards the relief of the pressing burdens at home. "Few," says Barry, "had the sagacity to perceive that the prosperity of America was the prosperity of England, and that more benefit could be derived to the mother country by leaving the colonies to their own way than by hampering their commerce with burdensome restrictions, and checking their industry by discouraging manufactures."
An act was passed by the General Court, July 23, 1:15, for maintain- ing a lighthouse upon the Great Brewster, or Beacon Island, as it was
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then called, at the mouth of Boston Harbor. When it came before the Lords of Trade, the next year, for their approval, Captain Coram ap- peared and objected to it, because " it laid a tax upon the shipping, and made no provision for pilots, which are much wanted," he said, "on that coast." Boston light was "kindled " September 14, 1716, and was, we believe, the first light in the colonies, if not the first on the continent. The dues were fixed at a penny a ton inwards and another penny outwards, except for coasters, which were to pay two shillings each at their clearing out; all fishing vessels, wood sloops, etc., were . taxed five shillings each by the year. Judge Sewall writes in his diary, January 14, 1:19-20: " Last night the light-house was burnt." There was no system of pilotage at this port until 1283. In 1:24 Joseph Marion established an Insurance Company in Boston, the first, perhaps, in New England.
In an elaborate report made by the Board of Trade in 1721 to the king, he was informed that, of "products proper for the consumption of Great Britain," Massachusetts had "timber, turpentine, tar and pitch, masts, pipes, and hogshead staves, whale fins and oil, and some furs; " that the provinee had a trade to "the foreign plantations in America, consisting chiefly in the exportation of horses to Surinam and and to Martinico and the other French islands;" whence came in return sugar, molasses, and rum, which was " a very great discourage- ment to the sugar planters in the British islands;" and that the people had "all sorts of common manufactures," but that "the branch of trade which was of the greatest importance to them, and which they were best enabled to carry on, was the building of ships, sloops, etc." The report set forth further, that about one hundred and fifty vessels were built in a year, measuring six thousand tons, mostly for sale abroad, but, that there were owned in the province about one hundred and ninety sail, besides one hundred and fifty boats employed in the coast fisheries.
In the winter of 1724-25, the shipwrights of London complained to the Lords of Trade, "that in eight years, ending 1120, they were in- formed there were seven hundred sail of ships built in New England, and in the years sinee as many, if not more ; and that this New England trade had drawn over so many working shipwrights that there are not enough left here to carry on the work." When asked what proposals they had to make to obviate this inconvenience, they were ready with a simple, not to say heroic, remedy for breaking down the competition complained of, and for their own protection: " If the ships built in the
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plantations were confined to trade only from one plantation to another, or to Great Britain, it would answer the end proposed; or, if they were allowed to trade to foreign parts, that then they should be obliged to pay a duty of five pence per ton each voyage they should make, and that they should also be restrained as to the higness of such ships or vessels as should be built in the plantations." Even the Lords of Trade were not prepared for so extreme an application of the protective principle.
By the various figures we have given in the foregoing pages, it has been shown that the trade between Boston and the West Indies was very large and important. This trade was seriously threatened by an Act of Parliament, passed in 1433, after a discussion which lasted through two years, imposing duties on molasses, sugar and rum im- ported into the colonies from any West India islands other than British. The purpose of the act was to break up the trade with the French, Dutch and Spanish islands, where these products of the planta- tions were obtained in exchange for fish. It is said that before the opening of the trade with these islands, molasses was thrown away hy the planters, and that it was first saved and put into casks to be brought to New England to be distilled into rum. The people of the northern colonies insisted that unless they could continue to sell fish to the planters on the foreign islands, and to import molasses from thence to be manufactured into spirit, they could not prosecute the fisheries except at a ruinous loss. The duty imposed on molasses was sixpence, sterling, a gallon, and the penalty for violating the Act was forfeiture of the vessel and cargo. New England, however, never really paid this tax, and the interdieted trade with the foreign islands did not cease until a late period of the controversy which terminated in the Revo- lution. So far as the eodfishery was concerned, it would seem not to have been much affected by the Act of 1433 during the thirty years which immediately followed.
According to some authorities, the annual production of rum in Massachusetts at this period was fifteen thousand hogsheads. It had become the "chief manufacture" of the province, "a staple com- modity," a "standing article in the Indian trade," and the " common drink " of laborers, timbermen, mastmen, loggers, and fishermen, who, it was said, "could not endure the hardships of their employments nor the rigors of the season without it." On the coast of Guinea it was " ex- changed for gold and slaves." Burke said of this product: "The
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quantity of spirits which they distil in Boston from the molasses they bring in from all parts of the West Indies is as surprising as the cheap rates at which they vend it, which is under two shillings a gallon : with this they supply almost all the consumption of our colonies in North America, the Indian trade there, the vast demands of their own and the Newfoundland fisheries, and in great measure, those of the African trade; but they are more famous for the quantity and cheapness than for the excellence of their rum."
We have this view of commercial Boston in a narrative, never pub- lished, of a Mr. Bennett, who visited the town in 1440; its population at that time is variously estimated at from sixteen to eighteen thou- sand: "At the bottom of the bay there is a fine wharf about half a mile in length, on the north side of which are built many ware- houses for the storing of merchants' goods; this they call the Long Wharf, to distinguish it from others of less note. And to this wharf ships of the greatest burthen come up so close as to unload their cargo without the assistance of boats. From the end of the Long Wharf, which lies east from the town, the buildings rise gradually with an easy ascent westward about a mile. There are a great many good houses. and several fine streets little inferior to some of our best in London, the principal of which is King's Street ; it runs upon a line from the end of the Long Wharf about a quarter of a mile, and at the upper end of it stands the Town House or Guild Hall, where the Governor meets the Council and House of Representatives; and the several Courts of Jus- tice are held there also. And there are likewise walks for the mer- chants, where they meet every day at one o'clock, in imitation of the Ex- change at London, which they call by the name of Royal Exchange too, round which there are several booksellers' shops; and there are four or five printing-houses, which have full employment in printing and reprinting books, of one sort or other, that are brought from Eng- land and other parts of Europe."
John Oldmixon, in the second edition of his work entitled " The Brit- ish Empire in America," published in 1441, wrote: " Upon the whole Boston is the most flourishing town for trade and commerce in the Eng- lish America. Near six hundred sail of ships have been laden here in a year for Europe and the British Plantations." In 1:41 there were "at one and the same time" upon the stocks in Boston, forty topsail vessels, measuring about seven thousand tons. But from this time there was a decline in the shipbuilding industry; the number of vessels
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launched in 1443 was thirty; in 1446, twenty; and in 1449 only fifteen, with an aggregate tonnage of two thousand four hundred and fifty tons. Douglas, from whom we take these figures, attributes this de- eline "to Mr. Shirley's faulty government," but we can easily under- stand that other causes may have contributed to the temporary depres- sion of this industry, such as the unfriendly and restrictive interference of the home government, and the conflicts between England and France, which vexed both hemispheres.
In the year 1741 the cod-fishery of the province was in a prosperous condition, and the annual product had reached two hundred and thirty thousand quintals. The vessels engaged in this industry were owned on Cape Cod, and at Marblehead, Gloucester and other ports on the north shore of Massachusetts Bay, but a large part of the product was brought to Boston for exportation. During the long years of war this fishery suffered severely, as the fishermen were called off to man pri- vateers, to enter the royal navy and, in other ways, to engage in the struggle.
The carrying-trade of the province did not suffer proportionately with the shipbuilding industry. The two interests are often classed together as if they were really one, and, in our own day, we have seen the former sacrificed for the sake of the latter, with most disastrous re- sults. Burke well called the New England people the Dutch of Amer- ica, for they were carriers for all the colonies of North America and the West Indies, and even for some parts of Europe. From Christmas, 144%, to Christmas, 1948, five hundred and forty vessels cleared from the port of Boston, and four hundred and thirty entered; these figures did not include coasting and fishing vessels, of at least an equal number. The proportionate size of the vessels may be inferred from the accounts of the Boston Naval Office on foreign voyages, which report from Michaelmas, 1747, to Michaelmas, 1148, four hundred and nintey-one clearances, of which fifty-one were ships, forty-four snows, fifty-four brigs, two hundred and forty-nine sloops and ninety-three schooners. In reference to the two-masted schooner, we may say that it dates back only to the year 1:14, when Edward Robinson, of Gloucester, built and rigged a vessel according to his own fancy, and unlike anything that had previously been seen either in America or Europe. As the strange looking craft, with her masts in her, as we suppose, started from the stocks at her launching, a by-stander exclaimed, "See, how she scoons! " Whereupon Robinson replied, " A schooner let her be." The special
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