HKB
TO THE HON. WM. TUDOR.
Quincy, July 17, 1818.
DEAR SIR,
Mr. Otis proceeded to page 198, of this great work of the great knight, sir Josiah Child.
Proposition eleventh, "That New England is the most prejudicial plantation in this kingdom."
"I am now to write of a people whose frugality, industry and temperance, and the happiness of whose laws and institutions do promise to themselves long life, with a wonderful increase of people, riches and power: and although no men ought to envy that virtue and wisdom in others, which themselves either cannot or will not practice, but rather to command and admire it; yet I think it the duty of every good man primarily to respect the welfare of his native country; and therefore, though I may offend some whom I would not willingly displease, I cannot omit, in the progress of this discourse, to take notice of some particulars, wherein Old England suffers diminution by the growth of those colonies settled in New England, and how that plantation differs from those more southerly, with respect to the gain or loss of this kingdom, viz.
"All our American plantations, except that of New England, produce commodities of different natures from those of this kingdom, as sugar, tobacco, cocoa, wool, ginger, sundry sorts of dying woods, &c. Whereas, New England produces generally the same we have here, viz: corn and cattle: some quantity of fish they do likewise kill, but that is taken and saved altogether by their inhabitants, which prejudiceth our Newfoundland trade; whereas, as hath been said, very few are or ought, according to prudence, be employed in those fisheries but the inhabitants of Old England. The other commodities we have from them are some few great masts, furs, and train oil, whereof the yearly value amounts to very little, the much greater value of returns from thence being made in sugar, cotton, wool, tobacco, and such like commodities, which they first receive from some other of his majesty's plantations in barter for dry cod fish, salt mackerel, beef, pork, bread, beer, flour, peas, &c. which they supply Barbadoes, Jamaica, &c. with, to the diminution of the vent of those commodities from this kingdom; the greatest expense whereof in our West India plantations would soon be found in the advance of the value of our lands in England, were it not for the vast and almost incredible supplies those colonies have from New England.
"2. The people of New England, by virtue of their primitive charters, being not so strictly tied to the observation of the laws of this kingdom, do sometimes assume a liberty of trading, contrary to the act of navigation, by reason whereof many of our American commodities, especially tobacco and sugar, are transported in New England shipping directly into Spain and other foreign countries, without being landed in England, or paying any duty to his majesty, which is not only loss to the king, and a prejudice to the navigation of Old England, but also a total exclusion of the old English merchants from the vent of those commodities in those ports where the new English vessels trade; because there being no custom paid on those commodities in New England, and a great custom paid upon them in Old England, it must necessarily follow that the New English merchant will be able to afford his commodities much cheaper at the market, than the Old English merchant: and those that can sell cheapest, will infallibly engross the whole trade, sooner or later.