18 CAUSES WHICH LED TO THE CHAPTER III. Causes of Discontent in America—Restrictions on Trade—Prohibition of the Illicit Trade with Spanish America—Licentiousness of the Guarda Costas—Failure of Remittances for Manufactures in consequence— Of Peace 17G3—Measures which led to the Stamp Act—Complaints of the Colonists—Their extraordinary Proceedings—Resist the Tea Act, and throw overboard the Cargoes of the Company's Ships—Repeal of the Stamp Act—Conduct of the Ministry. Among the first causes of discontent and com¬ plaint in the British colonies, were the restrictions which discouraged manufactures, by confining every province to the use of its own, and prohibiting the reciprocal importation of their respective fabrications. To prevent a whole people from following any branch of industry, is certainly a measure which human nature cannot bear with tame submission; and the severity of the regulation cannot be denied, even on the ground that the articles prohibited could be imported cheaper from England . The injury felt by the pro¬ hibition was not, at the time, of much consequence ; but the regulation was in itself considered a kind of insult to the understanding, more intolerable than pecuniary oppression. The discontent arising from this restriction would, in all probability, have passed away, had it not been succeeded by a deprivation of a most serious nature