muggling
became general; a narrative of the adroit devices resorted to would make
an interesting tale.

These restrictive acts brought about various momentous results. They not
only arrayed the whole trading class against Great Britain, and in turn
the great body of the colonists, but they operated to keep down in size
and latitude the private fortunes by limiting the ways in which the
wealth of individuals could be employed. Much money was withdrawn from
active business and invested in land and mortgages. Still, despite the
crushing laws with which colonial capitalists had to contend, the
fisheries were an incessant source of profit. By 1765 they employed
4,000 seamen and had 28,000 tons of shipping and did a business
estimated at somewhat more than a million dollars.

FOOTNOTES:

[31] "Lives of the Loyalists,":18.

[32] "Abstracts of Wills," ii:444-445.

[33] Ibid., 1:323-324.

[34] "Abstracts of Wills," 1:108.

[35] "An Historical Account of Massachusetts Currency." See also
Colonial Documents, iii:242, and the Records of New Amsterdam. See the
chapters on the Astor fortune in Part II for full details of the methods
in debauching and swindling the Indians in trading operations.

[36] Thus Captain Bellamy's speech in 1717 to Captain Baer of Boston,
whose sloop he had just sunk and rifled: "I am sorry that they [his
crew] won't let you have your sloop again, for I scorn to do any one a
mischief when it is not for my advantage; damn the sloop, we must sink
her, and she might be of use to you. Though you are a sneaking puppy,
and so are all those who will submit to be governed by laws which rich
men have made for their own security--for the cowardly whelps have not
the courage otherwise to defend what they get by their knavery. But damn
ye altogether; damn them for a pack of crafty rascals, and ye who serve
them, for a parcel of hen-hearted numbskulls. They villify us, the
scoundrels do, when there is only this difference: they rob the poor
under cover of law, forsooth, and we plunder the rich under protection
of our own courage. Had you better not make one of us than sneak after
these villains for employment." Baer refused and was put ashore.--"The
Lives and Bloody Exploits of the Most Noted Pirates":129-130.

[37] "A Commercial Sketch of Boston," Hunt's Merchant's Magazine, 1839,
1:125.

[38] Colonial Documents, iv:790.

[39] Ibid., 678.

CHAPTER IV

THE SHIPPING FORTUNES

Thus it was that a