USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Professional and industrial history of Suffolk County, Massachusetts, Volume II > Part 7
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The diversion of the able-bodied men of the country from their wonted industries in the field and forest, and on the sea, to the pursuits of war, was sufficient, of course, to account for the falling off in the
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supply of products suitable for shipment across the Atlantic, and the evil could not be remedied immediately. The shipment of specie could not be followed up for any length of time, and the cessation of remit- tances at last brought disaster to those who had sold or consigned goods from beyond the sea. London dates to August 27, 1184, re- ported : " No less than five great American houses tumbled in the city yesterday, one to the tune of £140,000." Again, under date of Sep- tember 3, it was said: " But few large fortunes have been made ship- ping goods to American houses, even before the war. Those who got money in that country had stores of their own, kept by their partners or factors, who had no separate interest, and were anxious to make early remittances. Where the same plan has been followed (with this difference, that no credit has been given) money was got last year, and to these people the prospects of this summer are by no means discour- aging." And later (September 24): " Very few of the last orders from America will be executed, as the tradesmen are coming to their senses. Very few dollars make their appearance now; indeed, the new States are almost exhausted of specie already."
The shipbuilding interest in New England also suffered for a time. In a London paper of August, 1784, we read : "The merchants of Lon- don, Bristol, Liverpool, and Glasgow, who used to send agents to America to contract for building ships for our foreign trade, finding the impolicy of such a measure, have now come to a resolution of giv- ing employment to the British subjects at home, instead of enriching the carpenters of the United States. By excluding American compet- itors, we shall augment the valuable race of shipwrights ; and the pub- lic as well as private interest will be promoted by introducing gradu- ally from Scotland and Wales, competitors even into the Thames, by means of their cheaper fabricks. The insurance from London to any port of America is now done at five per cent."
Bradford says: "The excessive importations of 1484 and 1785, and the drain of specie which followed, had the effect of deranging the State finances ; for many who had been extravagant in their purchases thought it first necessary to pay the debts they had thus incurred, so far as they were able, and to leave the payment of their taxes to a future day. Had the taxes from 1781 to 1784 been promptly paid, the pressure in the years which followed would have been less severe."
It might well have been supposed by the people of the United States that, having achieved their political independence, their commercial
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enterprise might now have free play upon the ocean ; and that although they could no longer lay claim to the precise privileges and immunities which they had formerly enjoyed as subjects of the British crown, they would be able to put in exercise on the sea, no less than on the land, all the rights attaching to citizens of a sovereign state. But if such was their expectation, they were soon to be disappointed. The same mischievous disposition as of old, to prescribe and to limit the channels in which American trade should flow, was manifested by the British government, notwithstanding the results of war and the dismember- ment of the empire which this policy, persisted in, had brought to pass. It had been found impracticable to negotiate a commercial treaty in behalf of the United States with Great Britain, and another course of restrictive legislation was now entered upon by the government of the latter country, more severe in some respects, and certainly more gall- ing to the people of the former, than that which previously had driven them into rebellion. But for this adherence of the mother country to the old policy of selfishness and exclusion, the animosities on the part of her children and quondam subjects, which were the natural result of the war waged by them for separation and independence, might speedily have been healed. But their commercial freedom was to be assailed again, and at the very point at which they had been made to suffer previously - their intercourse with the British West India Islands. They were forbidden to carry their fish thither; American vessels were not allowed to take the products of the islands to Eng- land; only American products might be imported direct from the United States to the ports of Great Britain, not even British ships be- ing permitted to bring West India products as formerly from New England. No wonder that these galling restrictions aroused a new spirit of resentment in those against whom they were put into exer- cise, culminating at length in a second war, which was to secure for them absolutely commercial freedom.
The prohibition relating to fish was promulgated in July, 1183. The order in council by which it was imposed was thought to have been se- eured by loyalist or tory influence. It was aimed, no douht, at the American fisheries, and was intended to encourage those of Nova Scotia and Newfoundland. We have already spoken of the importance of the trade with the West Indies to the merchants of Boston - the ex- change of fish for sugar, rum and molasses; this trade was now destroyed. Congress declared that retaliatory measures were neces-
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sary in order that American commerce should not pass into the hands of foreigners, and it asked to be invested with powers from the States to provide for the exigency, but no adequate authority was or could be conferred upon the confederacy.
The West India merchants and planters suffered almost as much from these trade restrictions as did the people of New England. In a letter from Jamaica, dated February 20, 1:84, to a Boston merchant, it was said: "You cannot conceive the embarrassments we labour under from the want of produce of your country. The people here are con- tinually cursing first the king, then the ministry, and lastly the gov- ernor." A letter from St. Kitts, written a few weeks earlier, said: " 1 am happy to tell you that by the last ships from England we are to have a free trade with North America with this single restriction, that they shall not be the carriers of any of the produce of the British islands to Great Britain."
An order in council, April 12, 1784, permitted only unmanufactured goods (except oil) and pitch, tar, turpentine, indigo, masts, yards, and bowsprits, being the growth or production of any of the United States. to be imported directly from them into any of the ports of the United Kingdom, either in British or American ships, by British subjects or by any of the people inhabiting in or belonging to the said United States, or any of them. The products of the West India Islands could be exported to the United States only in British ships, and the products of the United States could be imported into the West Indies, including the Bahamas and Bermudas, only by "British subjects in British-built vessels, owned by His Majesty's subjects and navigated according to law." These are specimens of the much-vaunted navi- gation aets, which some among us, even at this late day, extol as the highest result of national wisdom and enlightened statesmanship, and the essential features of which they would perpetuate in the com- mercial legislation of the United States.
It is one thing to impose limitations upon the commerce of other nations; it is quite another thing to accept with complacency such lim- itations, when proposed by others upon ourselves. Upon the enter- prising merchants, who were the life of the American cities and towns over one hundred years ago, the impression made by the trade regu- lations of which we have spoken was one of intense indignation, and they determined to do what they could for themselves and for cach other in self-defence. A meeting of merchants, traders, and others,
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was held in Boston, in Faneuil Hall, on the 16th day of April, 1485, at which resolutions were adopted which were aimed at " certain British merchants, factors and agents from England," "now residing in this town, who have received large quantities of English goods and are in expectation of receiving further supplies, imported in British bottoms or otherways, greatly to the hindrance of freight in all American vessels." The honor of the citizens was pledged not to purchase from, or have business connections with, the said British merchants, factors, and agents, and not to sell or let to them warehouses, shops, houses, or any other place for the sale of their goods. A committee of corres- pondence with other seaports was chosen, and another committee, whose duty it was "to approbate whom they pleased." This second committee consisted of Isaac Smith, John Sweetser, Josiah Waters, Joseph Russell, Amasa Davis, John Gardner and Thomas Dawes. One of these gentlemen, Mr. Russell, wrote to a friend: "You may well suppose our commission to be very disagreeable. We have as yet approbated only one gentleman, and he was recommended by a very large number of the most respectable characters of the town- Governor Hancock was one of the number-and as the recommenda- tion came from such a large proportion of the community, we gave him a verbal permission to land and store his effects. It is a matter of doubt whether we shall give approbation to any others."
In July of the same year the Legislature of Massachusetts passed an act for the regulation of navigation and commerce. It prohibited the ex- portation of any of the products of the United States from the ports of the Commonwealth in British ships, until the removal of the re- strictions imposed by Great Britain which we have enumerated; it laid a heavy tonnage duty, a light money tax, and double duties on goods brought into Massachusetts in British vessels. A Boston merchant, writing to his correspondent in Halifax, said: " After August a Brit- ish vessel arriving here will be obliged to pay five pounds a ton, and twenty-five per cent. on all goods on board, so that you will govern yourself accordingly." Bradford says: "The General Court pro- hibited British vessels to carry the products of the State; they were also' forbid entering and unlading when they brought cargoes from ports from which American vessels were excluded, and only three places of entry were allowed within the State." This legislation was made to apply at first to other countries besides Great Britain; but it was repealed, so far as it related to them, on the 29th of November in the same year.
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It was recognized on the other side of the ocean, as it was distinctly stated by our own public men, that the commercial restrictions and prohibitions, in fact, the whole protective policy, to which the United States resorted at the beginning of its history, were made use of as weapons of defence and retaliation ; and the inference is plain, that a more just and liberal course on the part of Great Britain and other countries, would have been met in a corresponding spirit of liberality here. It was said in a London newspaper: "The Americans are forming a commercial system to meet that of this country, and of those nations who have restricted their carrying their own produce to the ports of those prohibited nations. A circular letter was written from Philadelphia to the merchants of the other great trading cities on the subject, and so generally approved that it is thought restrictions will soon be laid on the trade of all those nations, particularly the British, who, it is alleged, both in their prohibitions and strictness of execution, have manifested greater severity than others."
Thomas Jefferson is quoted as saying in 1991: "If particular na- tions grasp at undue shares of our commerce, and more especially if they seize on the means of the United States to convert them into aliment for their own strength, and withdraw them entirely from the support of those to whom they belong, defensive and protective meas- ures become necessary on the part of the nation whose marine sources are thus invaded, or it will be disarmed of its defence, its productions will be at the mercy of the nation which has possessed itself exclusively of the means of carrying them, and its politics may be influenced by those who command its commerce." The Act of Congress of 1812, re- lating to the foreign trade of the country, was substantially a counter- part of the British navigation acts then in force, and it contains the following suggestive proviso: " Provided, nevertheless, that this regu- lation shall not extend to the vessels of any foreign nation which has not adopted, and which shall not adopt, a similar regulation." Mr. William S. Lindsay, the historian of British Shipping, expressed the opinion that the government of the United States was fully justified in all the retaliatory measures adopted at this period.
To come back to Boston, in the summer of 1785, it is said that there was not a single British merchantman in the harbor. The selfish policy of England was beginning in various ways to react upon its own people. It soon became apparent, at least to the more closely observ- ant, that to embarrass the American merchant was to embarrass his
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English creditor. In the month of November, London dates were re- ceived in Boston to September 3, and, among other news, it was re- ported : "Thursday, three capital houses in the city were obliged to stop payment, on account of the remittances from America not arriving according to promise for goods sent to that country."
The intelligence of what had been done by the Legislature of Massa- chusetts made a great impression in mercantile circles in England ; but the government was not to be turned aside from the policy and purpose to which it had committed itself. A letter from the West Indies reached Boston, in April, 1486, from which we quote: "The ministry suppose they have now put a finishing stroke to the building and increase of American vessels; an act has lately been passed in England, and in- structions arrived in February, that no American-built vessel should be employed or owned by British subjects on any pretence whatever, ex- cept such as were built before the year 1466; and in case of dispute, the carpenters of the ships of war are to determine the build. American vessels condemned for smuggling are to be burnt hereafter, not sold." It was further stated that three hundred sail of brigs, schooners, and sloops, employed in the trade among the islands, would be rendered useless by this legislation. The American shipping, heretofore em- ployed in the foreign trade of Great Britain, had been a good deal more than half as much as the British; and as ships could be built in New England and sold in Britain for one-third less than British-built ves- sels, there had been a constant demand there for them.
The merchants of Boston did not allow themselves to be discouraged by the annoyances and hindrances to which they were subjected, in the unequal struggle in which they were compelled to engage. On the contrary, they were at this very time pushing out towards more distant fields of effort and enterprise, where they were to reap larger and richer results than they had yet reached. They not only did not propose to abandon to their rivals the trade of the Atlantic which they, and their fathers before them, had proscented so successfully ; they de- termined to participate in the commerce of more distant seas, expect- ing, no doubt, that they would thus avoid the vexatious interference with which they had long contended nearer home. The New York Gasettcer said: "Thank God! the intrigues of a Christian court do not influence the wise decrees of the Eastern world."
In July, 1184, we find an advertisement of " fresh teas taken out of an Indiaman, and brought by Captain Hallet from the Cape of Good
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Hope," to be had at Penuel Bowen's store in Dock Square. American enterprise was now venturing beyond the Cape, and, not unnaturally, the European merchants who. thus far, had had it all their own way in that part of the world, were prompt with their predictions of failure. A London paper of March 16, 1485, made this remark: "The Americans have given up all thought of a China trade, which never can be carried on to advantage without some settlement in the East Indies. The ship they fitted out for China, soon after the peace, has been offered to sale in France for a sum less than the outfit." The judg- ment thus expressed was rather premature, for, two months later, almost to a day, May 18, the ship referred to, the Empress of the Seas. Captain Greene, arrived at New York from the East Indies, after a round voyage of fourteen months and twenty-four days. She had sailed from New York in February, 1:84, touched at the Cape de Verdes, and reached Canton in August. She was a vessel of three hundred and sixty tons; and her lading consisted, for the most part, of four hundred and forty pieuls of ginseng, which she exchanged at Canton for teas and manufactured goods. The supercargo of the Empress of the Seas on this voyage was a young Bostonian, Samuel Shaw, who had served on General Knox's staff in the War of the Revolution, a man of far-reaching intelli- gence and scholarly accomplishments. Mr. Shaw came home full of enthusiasm as well as information ; and he must have imparted of both to his friends in Boston, for we cannot but associate with his return the following advertisement which appeared in the Independent Chronicle. June 23, 1485: " Proposals for building and fitting out a ship for the East Indian trade have been approved of by a considerable number of citizens, who met at Mr. Walter Heyer's in King street, on Thursday evening last. Several gentlemen are named to receive subscriptions, and this is to give notice that another meeting is appointed on Wednes- day evening next, at the same house, when any citizen who wishes to become interested may have an opportunity. A single share is only $300." Mr. Shaw sailed again from New York, in the Hope, Captain James Magec, February 4, 1786, having been commissioned as American consul at the port of Canton, and being accompanied by Mr. Isaac Sears and Captain Thomas Randall. We do not know whether the project. advertised as we have quoted, was carried out : probably it was not, for money was scarce, and general confidence did not prevail; but the re- stilt of Mr. Shaw's visit was most important, as we shall sec.
In 1384 the publication of the journals of the great navigator, Captain Cook, called the attention of the commercial world to the immense
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number of sea-otter to be found on the Northwest coast of America. " The fur of this animal, which was first introduced into commerce in 1:25, is described as a beautiful, soft, elose, jet-black." A young Ameri- can, John Ledyard, who sailed with Captain Cook, and published his private journal in Hartford in 1983, dedicating it to Governor Trumbull, is believed to have been the first man in America or Europe to advo- cate the opening of a trade in furs between the Northwest coast and China. He sought to convince the merchants of New York of the advantages of such an enterprise, but his proposal seems to have been regarded as visionary. A few of the leading merchants of Boston, after much deliberation, determined to embark in this new trade, namely, Joseph Barrell, Samuel Brown, Charles Bulfinch, John Derby (or Darby), and Crowell Hatch ; and a wealthy New York merchant, John Marsden Pintard, associated himself with them. These gentlemen formed a company, and bought the ship Columbia (built in Scituate, in 1263), two hundred and twelve tons, and the sloop Washington, ninety tons; they put Captain John Kendrick in command of the expedition, with Captain Robert Gray in charge of the sloop. The vessels took their departure from Boston, September 30, 1787, and doubled Cape Horn in the following April. They carried out with them a large number of pewter medals, with a fair relief of the vessels upon them, and the fol- lowing legend: "Columbia and Washington, commanded by J. Ken- drick. Fitted at Boston, N. America, for the Pacific Ocean by J. Bar- rell, S. Brown, C. Bulfinch, J. Darby, C. Hatch, J. M. Pintard, 178 ;. " As the State of Massachusetts had just established a mint in Boston for the coining of cents and half-cents, the medals were probably struek there. A few were struck in silver and bronze, and one of the latter is in the possession of the Massachusetts Historical Society, the gift of Mr. Barrell in 1791.
The old prosperity was beginning to appear again. At the session of the General Court in the spring of 1286, it was ordered that a portion of the tax then in process of collection might be paid in public securities, and this proved a great accommodation to the people, who were able to purehase them at a price far below their nominal value. From this time forward, we are told, the commercial interests of New England began to improve. They had reached the lowest point of depression, and any change, of necessity, must have been for the better. In September, 1284, the editor of the Centinel quoted from a correspondent in Phila- delphia, who said that a few days before "he had the curiosity to go
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along the docks and count the vessels loading and unloading; and, to his great mortification, found that there were sixteen under British colours, discharging and taking in their cargoes, and but one solitary American, which was loading with lumber for the West Indies." The editor added that the case was very similar in Boston.
In the Independent Chronicle, February 28, 1488, we find a paragraph informing the public "that subscriptions were filling up to build three ships for the encouragement of our industrious mechanics." In the same paper a plan is urged for the establishment of Chambers of Com- merce, one in each State, "for the purpose of promoting an extensive trade upon such principles as will lastingly cement the union of the whole confederacy." A chamber was organized in New York in 1468, and an attempt had already been made to establish one in Boston. A call was published February 23, 1785, " for a meeting of merchants this evening at six o'clock at the American Coffee House on that important subject, a Chamber of Commerce, and when the very great advantage of this institution is considered, both as to commerce and the govern- ment at large, it is presumed every merchant, who wishes well to either, will give his punctual attendance." A committee was appointed at this meeting to take definite action, but the following announcement under date of June 29, would seem to indicate that the merchants were apa- thetic on the subject : "The merchants are informed that the committee appointed to form a Chamber of Commerce, met at the American Cof- fee House on Monday evening last in order to lay before them a report -but a very thin meeting obliged them to adjourn until this evening, then to meet at the same place at seven o'clock, where a general at- tendance is requested, or the plan must be entirely dropt." The sub- sequent attempt in 1488 was no more successful; but some of the ob- jects of the proposed chamber were met by the Association of the Tradesmen and Manufacturers of the town of Boston, consisting of one representative from each branch of business, which was organized in the summer of 1485, for mutual defence against the irregular trade car- ried on by traders and factors from abroad. A circular letter was ad- dressed "to their brethren in the several seaports in the Union," by a committee of the association, consisting of John Gray, Gibbons Sharp, Benjamin Austin, jr., Sarson Belcher, William Hawes, and Joshua Witherlee. A Chamber of Commerce was finally established in Boston in or about the year 1;93, but we know little of its history. Thomas Russell was its first president, and Stephen Higginson its first vice- president.
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The constitution framed in 1787, and adopted by a majority of the States in 1988, was made necessary by the conditions under which the people of the country were obliged to conduct their business affairs. For this statement we have the authority of Fisher Ames, who said in the First Congress: "I conceive, sir, that the present constitution was dietated by commercial necessity more than any other cause. The want of an efficient government to secure the manufacturing interests and to advance our commerce, was long seen by men of judgment. and pointed out by patriots solicitous to promote the general welfare." Under the influence of the same considerations, the merchants of Boston and the neighboring towns were anxious for the prompt adoption of the consti- tution by the State of Massachusetts. They were favorable to a strong federal authority, which should increase foreign confidence in the na- tional stability, and lead to satisfactory commercial relations with European states, such as could not be expected under a less positive central government. On the other hand we are told that the long hesitancy of Rhode Island, which was the last member of the confed- eraey to adopt the constitution, was largely due to her desire that " her superior advantages of location, and the possession of what was then supposed to be the best harbor on the Atlantic coast, should not be sub- jected to the control of a Congress, which was by that instrument ex- pressly authorized to regulate commerce with foreign nations, and provide that no preference should be given to the ports of any State. "
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