For
whilst he was First Lord of the Admiralty, though not strictly called
upon in his official line, he presented a very strong memorial to the
Lords of the Treasury, (my Lord Bute was then at the head of the board,)
heavily complaining of the growth of the illicit commerce in America.
Some mischief happened even at that time from this over-earnest zeal.
Much greater happened afterwards, when it operated with greater power in
the highest department of the finances. The bonds of the Act of
Navigation were straitened so much that America was on the point of
having no trade, either contraband or legitimate. They found, under the
construction and execution then used, the act no longer tying, but
actually strangling them. All this coming with new enumerations of
commodities, with regulations which in a manner put a stop to the mutual
coasting intercourse of the colonies, with the appointment of courts of
admiralty under various improper circumstances, with a sudden extinction
of the paper currencies, with a compulsory provision for the quartering
of soldiers,--the people of America thought themselves proceeded against
as delinquents, or, at best, as people under suspicion of delinquency,
and in such a manner as they imagined their recent services in the war
did not at all merit. Any of these innumerable regulations, perhaps,
would not have alarmed alone; some might be thought reasonable; the
multitude struck them with terror.
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