A History of the American People

during Charles II's reign, its main concern was with regulated trade. By an Act of 1660,
enumerated' commodities from the English mainland colonies in America had to be sent direct to England. These included tobacco, cotton, wool, indigo, to which were later added tar, pitch, turpentine, hemp, masts, yards, rice, copper, iron, timber, furs, and pearls. These included all the staples of the South, chiefly tobacco, rice, and indigo. But, further north, leading exports like fish-for a long time the chief staple of New England-grain, and other foods were kept out of England by high tariffs. So the North, especially New England, sent to the West Indies and southern Europe dried fish, pickles and pickled beef and pork, horses and livestock, plus building materials. New York and Philadelphia sent flour and wheat. As, by the closing decades of the 17th century, the West Indies was concentrating largely on sugar and tobacco, it imported food and wood cheaply from the mainland colonies. In return, they got molasses, to turn into rum for the fishing fleet and to buy slaves. If they were lucky, they got gold and silver too. The cash was welcome, because under this mercantalist system the balance of trade was in England's favor and there was a chronic shortage of coin in America. Any specie they got from the West Indies 'seldom continues six months in the province before it is remitted to Europe.' Business was accounted in pounds, shillings, and pence, but English coin was seldom seen. Large-scale internal trade was done in drafts and bills of exchange, local trade in barter. Termly bills of students at Harvard College were for decades met by produce, livestock, and pickled meat. In 1649 one student is recorded as settling his bill withan old cow.' The accounts for the
college's first building includes one item: Received a goat 30S plantation of Watertown rate, which died.' All kinds of dodgy procedures were used to get round the shortage of specie. Thus in Virginia and Maryland, receipts for tobacco deposited in warehouses circulated as cash. Then colonial governments began to create paper credit-a slippery slope. In 1690 Massachusetts created bills of credit for payment to militia soldiers. This example was eagerly followed, and such paper money acceptable, at a discount, for silver and marked with a date of payment soon spread. But this was followed by larger, weaker issues, which discredited it. So American paper money tended to be rotten from the start, and distrust of it-followed by distrust of the banks which circulated it-became deep-rooted in Americans from an early date, and was to have very long-term consequences. Primitiveloan banks,' issuing credit on the security of real estate,
made the financial system even more suspect. Parliament in England, instead of solving the
problem by ensuring that America got enough coin, stamped on the consequences of the shortage
as an abuse. In 1751 it forbade issue of further bills of credit as legal tender in New England, and
in 1764 it extended the ban to all the colonies. This both infuriated the Americans and proved
ineffective, since by then an estimated $22 million of unlawful paper was already in circulation.
It was an early example of the way in which government from both sides of the Atlantic would
not work.
Irritation with England, whenever the home government exercised any authority at all, was an
early American characteristic. It is a curious fact that the first printed work ever published in
America, put out by Stephen Daye in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in January 1639 (he had come
out only the year before) was a broadside, The Oath of a Free-Man, attacking the oath of
allegiance all settlers had to swear to the English crown. Taxes in goods were exacted on settlers,
without much success to be sure, and some of this got back to the English crown. But in return it
was hard for the colonies to see what they got, other than notional protection. The home
government certainly did nothing to defend outlying farms or plantations from occasional Indian
raids-for that, the settlers were left entirely to their own devices. On the whole, relations between
English settlers and Indians were good and there was surprisingly little conflict. When it