AMERICAN REVOLUTION. 19

to the colonies, and equally injurious to the interests of England.

For more than a century, a very lucrative branch of trade had been carried on between the British West Indies and the Spanish settlements in South America. For many years the North American colonies engrossed, also, a great share of this advan- tageous commerce. To the British, it was a pursuit of clear gain, and prodigious value. It consisted of an exchange of vast quantities of all kinds of British commodities for the precious metals, which were all remitted to England. The Spanish monarchy, sensi- ble that the trade was ruinous to them, and that the immense advantages of it were on the side of Britain, stationed gum'da costas to scour the coasts, and to seize every vessel that approached near them. The indiscriminate license with which they executed their orders, provoked the war of 1739, between Great Britain and Spain.

Although it was by no means the business of England to prevent this trade, yet a system was adopted, and pursued, as if a convention had been entered into for the purpose. The British cruizers, as if they had received their commissions and their pay from Spain, acted so effectually, that in a short period they completely destroyed the trade.

In the year 1755, these measures, with some others which restricted the importation of foreign goods, as formerly, free of duty, from Great Britain to North America, produced loud discontent, both in England and America.