We Are Not Informed What Were The Goods Imported;
But Most Probably They Were Brazil Wood, Sugar, And Cotton.
The trade
continued till 1580, when Spain, getting possession of Portugal, put a stop
to it.
The next notice of any trading voyage to America occurs in 1593, when some
English ships sailed to the entrance of the St. Lawrence for morse and
whale fishing. This is the first mention of the latter fishery, or of whale
fins, or whale bones by the English. They could not find any whales; but on
an island they met with 800 whale fins, the remains of a cargo of a Biscay
ship which had been wrecked here.
In 1602, the English had suspended all intercourse with America for sixteen
years, in consequence of the unsuccessful attempts of Raleigh. But, at this
time, the intercourse was renewed: a ship sailed to Virginia, the name then
given to the greater part of the east coast of North America; and a traffic
was carried on with the Indians for peltry, sassafras, cedar wood, &c.
Captain Gosnol, who commanded this vessel, was a man of considerable skill
in his profession, and he is said to have been the first Englishman who
sailed directly to North America, and not, as before, by the circuitous
course of the West Indies and the Gulf of Florida. In the subsequent year
there was some traffic carried on with the Indians of the continent, and
some of the uncolonized West India islands.
Prior to the year 1606 several attempts had been made to colonize different
parts of the new world by the English, but they all proved abortive. In
this year, however, a permanent settlement was established near James
River, within the Chesapeake. It is not our plan to detail all the
particular settlements, or their progress to maturity; but merely to point
out the beginnings of them, as evidence of our extending commerce, and to
state such proofs as most strikingly display their improvement and the
advantages the mother country derived from them. In conformity with this
plan, we may mention that sugar plantations were first formed in Barbadoes
in 1641: this, as Mr. Anderson, in his History of Commerce, justly
observes, "greatly hastened the improvement of our other islands, which
soon afterwards followed it in planting sugar to very great advantage. And,
as it was impossible to manage the planting of that commodity by white
people in so hot a climate, so neither could sufficient numbers of such be
had at any rate. Necessity, therefore, and the example of Portugal gave
birth to the negro slave trade to the coast of Guinea and it is almost
needless to add, that such great numbers of slaves, and also the increase
of white people in those islands, soon created a vast demand for all
necessaries from England, and also a new and considerable trade to Madeira
for wines to supply those islands." The immediate consequence of the spread
of the sugar culture in our West India islands was, that the ports of
London and Bristol became the great magazines for this commodity, and
supplied all the north and middle parts of Europe; and the price of the
Portuguese-Brazil sugars was reduced from 8_l_. to 2_l_. 10_s_. per cwt.
The rapid growth of the English colonies on the continent and in the
islands of America, during the seventeenth century, is justly ascribed by
Sir Josiah Child, to the emigration thither, occasioned by the persecution
of the Puritans by James I. and Charles I.; to the defeat of the Royalists
and Scotch by Cromwell; and, lastly, to the Restoration, and the consequent
disbanding of the army, and fears of the partizans of Cromwell. It may be
added, that most of the men who were driven to America from these causes,
were admirably fitted to form new settlements, being of industrious habits,
and accustomed to plain fare and hard work.
The American plantations, as they were called, increased so rapidly in
commerce that, according to the last author referred to, they did, even in
the year 1670, employ nearly two-thirds of all our English shipping, "and
therefore gave constant sustenance, it may be, to 200,000 persons here at
home." At this period New England seems to have directed its chief
attention and industry to the cod and mackerel fisheries, which had
increased their ships and seamen so much as to excite the jealousy of Sir
Josiah Child, who, however, admits that what that colony took from England
amounted to ten times more than what England took from it. The Newfoundland
fishery, he says, had declined from 250 ships in 1605, to eighty in 1670:
this he ascribes to the practice of eating fish alone on fast days, not
being so strictly kept by the Catholics as formerly. From Carolina, during
the seventeenth century, England obtained vast quantities of naval stores,
staves, lumber, hemp, flax, and Indian corn. About the end of this century,
or at the very commencement of the next, the culture of rice was introduced
by the accident of a vessel from Madagascar happening to put into Carolina,
which had a little rice left; this the captain gave to a gentleman, who
sowed it.
The colony of Virginia seems to have flourished at an earlier period than
any of the other English colonies. In the year 1618, considerable
quantities of tobacco were raised there; and it appears, by proclamations
of James I. and Charles I., that no tobacco was allowed to be imported into
England, but what came from Virginia or the Bermudas.
The colony of Pennsylvania was not settled by Pen till the year 1680: he
found there, however, many English families, and a considerable number of
Dutch and Swedes. The wise regulations of Pen soon drew to him industrious
settlers; but the commerce in which they engaged did not become so
considerable as to demand our notice.
III. The commercial intercourse of England with India, which has now grown
to such extent and importance, and from which has sprung the anomaly of
merchant-sovereigns over one of the richest and most populous districts of
the globe, began in the reign of Elizabeth.
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