Imperial Control in Operation.-Day after day,week after week,year after year,the machinery for political and judicial control over colonial affairs was in operation.At one time the British governors in the colonies were ordered not to approve any colonial law imposing a duty on European goods imported in English vessels.Again,when North Carolina laid a tax on peddlers,the council objected to it as "restrictive upon the trade and dispersion of English manu-factures throughout the continent."At other times,Indian trade was regulated in the interests of the whole empire or grants of lands by a colonial legislature were set aside.Virginia was forbidden to close her ports to North Carolina lest there should be retaliation.
In short,foreign and intercolonial trade were subjected to a control higher than that of the colony,foreshadowing a day when the Constitution of the United States was to commit to Congress the power to regulate interstate and foreign commerce and commerce with the Indians.A superior judicial power,towering above that of the colonies,as the Supreme Court at Washington now towers above the states,kept the colonial legislatures within the metes and bounds of established law.In the thousands of appeals,memorials,petitions,and complaints,and the rulings and decisions upon them,were written the real history of British imperial control over the American colonies.
So great was the business before the Lords of Trade that the colonies had to keep skilled agents in London to protect their interests.As common grievances against the operation of this machinery of control arose,there appeared in each colony a considerable body of men,with the merchants in the lead,who chafed at the restraints imposed on their enterprise.Only a powerful blow was needed to weld these bodies into a common mass nourishing the spirit of colonial nationalism.When to the repeated minor irritations were added general and sweeping measures of Parliament applying to every colony,the rebound came in the Revolution.
Parliamentary Control over Colonial Affairs.-As soon as Parliament gained in power at the expense of the king,it reached out to bring the American colonies under its sway as well.Between the execution of Charles I and the ac-cession of George III,there was enacted an immense body of legislation regu-lating the shipping,trade,and manufactures of America.All of it,based on the "mercantile"theory then prevalent in all countries of Europe,was designed tocontrol the overseas plantations in such a way as to foster the commercial and business interests of the mother country,where merchants and men of finance had got the upper hand.According to this theory,the colonies of the British empire should be confined to agriculture and the production of raw materials,and forced to buy their manufactured goods of England.
The Navigation Acts.-In the first rank among these measures of British colonial policy must be placed the navigation laws framed for the purpose of building up the British merchant marine and navy-arms so essential in de-fending the colonies against the Spanish,Dutch,and French.The beginning of this type of legislation was made in 1651and it was worked out into a system early in the reign of Charles II （1660-85）.
The Navigation Acts,in effect,gave a monopoly of colonial commerce to British ships.No trade could be carried on between Great Britain and her dominions save in vessels built and manned by British subjects.No European goods could be brought to America save in the ships of the country that produced them or in English ships.These laws,which were almost fatal to Dutch shipping in America,fell with severity upon the colonists,compelling them to pay higher freight rates.The adverse effect,however,was short-lived,for the measures stimulated shipbuilding in the colonies,where the abundance of raw materials gave the master builders of America an advantage over those of the mother country.Thus the colonists in the end profited from the restrictive policy written into the Navigation Acts.
The Acts against Manufactures.-The second group of laws was deliberate-ly aimed to prevent colonial industries from competing too sharply with those of England.Among the earliest of these measures may be counted the Woolen Act of 1699,forbidding the exportation of woolen goods from the colonies and even the woolen trade between towns and colonies.When Parliament learned,as the result of an inquiry,that New England and New York were making thou-sands of hats a year and sending large numbers annually to the Southern colo-nies and to Ireland,Spain,and Portugal,it enacted in 1732a law declaring that "no hats or felts,dyed or undyed,finished or unfinished"should be "put upon any vessel or laden upon any horse or cart with intent to export to any place whatever."The effect of this measure upon the hat industry was almost ruin-ous.A few years later a similar blow was given to the iron industry.By an act of 1750,pig and bar iron from the colonies were given free entry to England to encourage the production of the raw material;but at the same time the law pro-vided that "no mill or other engine for slitting or rolling of iron,no plating forge to work with a tilt hammer,and no furnace for making steel"should be built in the colonies.As for those already built,they were declared public nuisances andordered closed.Thus three important economic interests of the colonists,the woolen,hat,and iron industries,were laid under the ban.