FRONTIERS^309while hiring underpaid subordinates overseas. They in turn found it
more gainful to accept bribes from colonial merchants than to carry
out their duties. Or to levy duties: Britain was paying these loafers
some £8,000 a year to collect some £2,000.^33
So, yes, these prohibitions made little difference in money.^34 But
that does not mean they made little difference. When, in the 1760s,
new and activist British ministers vowed to set things straight and
make the colonists pay the costs of their security and administration,
as good colonists should, the shock made otherwise reasonable
measures intolerable. (It is astonishing how quickly neglect and
tolerance become a vested right. And how quickly prospect
outweighs retrospect: what will you do to me next?) The Boston
Gazette expressed outrage: "Men of war, cutters, marines with their
bayonets fixed, judges of admiralty, collectors, comptrollers,
searchers, tide waiters, land waiters, and a whole catalogue of pimps
are sent hither not to protect our trade but to distress it."^35
Adam Smith's great treatise was published in 1776, in the same
year that the colonists declared their independence. Even had his
economic reasoning been correct, injustice perceived is injustice felt.
Men are not moved by bread alone.