control suggested during the war. More serious measures were impending.
When George Grenville became the head of the cabinet, in April, 1763, he
took up and elaborated three distinctly new lines of policy, which grew
to be the direct causes of the American Revolution. The first was the
rigid execution of the Acts of Trade; the second was the taxation of the
colonies for the partial support of British garrisons; the third was the
permanent establishment of British troops in America. What was the purpose
of each of these groups of measures?
[Sidenote: Navigation acts.]
[Sidenote: Effect of the system.]
The object of the first series was simply to secure obedience to the
Navigation Acts (Colonies, Section 44, 128),--laws long on the statute
book, and admitted by most Americans to be legal. The Acts were intended
simply to secure to the mother-country the trade of the colonies; they
were in accordance with the practice of other nations; they were far
milder than the similar systems of France and Spain, because they gave to
colonial vessels and to colonial merchants the same privileges as those
enjoyed by English ship-owners and traders. The Acts dated from 1645, but
had repeatedly been re-enacted and enlarged, and from time to time more
efficient provision was made for their enforcement. In the first place,
the Navigation Acts required that all the colonial trade should be carried
on in ships built and owned in England or the colonies. In the second
place, most of the colonial products were included in a list of
"enumerated goods," which could be sent abroad, even in English or
colonial vessels, only to English ports. The intention was to give to
English home merchants a middleman's profit in the exchange of American
for foreign goods. Among the enumerated goods were tobacco, sugar, indigo,
copper, and furs, most of them produced by the tropical and sub-tropical
colonies. Lumber, provisions, and fish were usually not enumerated; and
naval stores, such as tar, hemp, and masts, even received an English
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