their growth, and strengthened with their strength
They were confirmed in obedience to it even more by usage than by law.
They scarcely had remembered a time when they were not subject to such
restraint. Besides, they were indemnified for it by a pecuniary
compensation. Their monopolist happened to be one of the richest men in
the world. By his immense capital (primarily employed, not for their
benefit, but his own) they were enabled to proceed with their fisheries,
their agriculture, their shipbuilding, (and their trade, too, within the
limits,) in such a manner as got far the start of the slow, languid
operations of unassisted Nature. This capital was a hot-bed to them.
Nothing in the history of mankind is like their progress. For my part, I
never cast an eye on their flourishing commerce, and their cultivated
and commodious life, but they seem to me rather ancient nations grown to
perfection through a long series of fortunate events, and a train of
successful industry, accumulating wealth in many centuries, than the
colonies of yesterday,--than a set of miserable outcasts a few years
ago, not so much sent as thrown out on the bleak and barren shore of a
desolate wilderness three thousand miles from all civilized intercourse.

All this was done by England whilst England pursued trade and forgot
revenue. You not only acquired commerce, but you actually created the
very objects of trade in America; and by that creation you raised the
trade of this kingdom at least fourfold. America had the compensation of
your capital, which made her bear her servitude. She had another
compensation, which you are now going to take away from her. She had,
except the commercial restraint, every characteristic mark of a free
people in all her internal concerns. She had the image of the British
Constitution. She had the substance. She was taxed by her own
representatives. She chose most of her own magistrates. She paid them
all. She had in effect the sole disposal of her own internal government.
This whole state of commercial servitude and civil liberty, taken
together, is certainly not perfect freedom; but comparing it with the
ordinary circumstances of human nature, it was an happy and a liberal
condition.

I know, Sir, that great and not unsuccessful pains have been taken to
inflame our minds by an outcry, in this House, and out of it, that in
America the Act of Navigation neither is or never was obeyed. But if you
take the colonies thr