Note 274 — Chapter X
Reading edition
"Petitions were received by Parliament from the merchants of London, Bristol, Lancaster, Liverpool, Hull, Glasgow, etc., and indeed from most of the trading and manufacturing towns and boroughs in the kingdom. In these petitions they set forth the great decay of their trade, owing to the laws and regulations made for America; the vast quantities of our manufactures (besides those articles imported from abroad, which were enclosed either with our own manufactures or with the produce of our colonies) which the American trade formerly took off our hands; by all which many thousand manufacturers, seamen, and labourers had been employed, to the very great and increasing benefit of the nation. That in return for these exports the petitioners had received from the colonies rice, indigo, tobacco, naval stores, oil, whale-fins, furs, and lately potash, with other staple commodities, besides a large balance of remittances by bills of exchange and bullion obtained by the colonists for articles of their produce, not required for the British market, and therefore exported to other places.
"That from the nature of this trade, consisting of British manufactures exported, and of the import of raw material from America, many of them used in our manufactures, and all of them tending to lessen our dependence on neighbouring states, it must be deemed of the highest importance in the commercial system of this nation. That this commerce, so beneficial to the state, and so necessary to the support of multitudes, then lay under such difficulties and discouragements, that nothing less than its utter ruin was apprehended without the immediate interposition of Parliament.
"That the colonies were then indebted to the merchants of Great Britain to the sum of several millions sterling; and that when pressed for payment, they appeal to past experience in proof of their willingness; but declare it is not in their power at present to make good their engagements, alleging that the taxes and restrictions laid upon them, and the extension of the jurisdiction of the Vice-Admiralty Courts, established by some late Acts of Parliament, particularly by an Act passed in the 4th year of his present Majesty, for granting certain duties in the British Colonies and Plantations in America, and by an Act passed in the 5th year of his Majesty, for granting and applying certain stamp duties, etc., in said colonies, etc., with several regulations and restraints, which, if founded in Acts of Parliament for defined purposes, they represent to have been extended in such a manner as to disturb legal commerce and harass the fair trader, and to have so far interrupted the usual, former and most useful branches of their commerce, restrained the sale of their produce, thrown the state of the several provinces into confusion, and brought on so great a number of actual bankruptcies that the former opportunities and means of remittances and payments were utterly lost and taken from them.
"That the petitioners were, by these unhappy events, reduced to the necessity of applying to the House, in order to secure themselves and their families from impending ruin; to prevent a multitude of manufacturers from becoming a burden to the community, or else seeking their bread in other countries, to the irretrievable loss of the kingdom; and to preserve the strength of this nation entire, its commerce flourishing, the revenues increasing, our navigation the bulwark of the kingdom, in a state of growth and extension, and the colonies, from inclination, duty, and interest, attached to the mother country."
"Such a number of petitions from every part of the kingdom, pregnant with so many interesting facts, stated and attested by such numbers of people, whose lives had been entirely devoted to trade, and who must be naturally supposed to be competent judges of a subject which they had so long and so closely attended to (besides that it showed the general sense of the nation), could not fail of having great weight with the House." (Annual Register for 1766, Vol. IX., Chap, vii., pp. 35, 36.)