no furnace for making steel" should be built in the
colonies. As for those already built, they were declared public
nuisances and ordered closed. Thus three important economic interests of
the colonists, the woolen, hat, and iron industries, were laid under the
ban.

_The Trade Laws._--The third group of restrictive measures passed by the
British Parliament related to the sale of colonial produce. An act of
1663 required the colonies to export certain articles to Great Britain
or to her dominions alone; while sugar, tobacco, and ginger consigned to
the continent of Europe had to pass through a British port paying custom
duties and through a British merchant's hands paying the usual
commission. At first tobacco was the only one of the "enumerated
articles" which seriously concerned the American colonies, the rest
coming mainly from the British West Indies. In the course of time,
however, other commodities were added to the list of enumerated
articles, until by 1764 it embraced rice, naval stores, copper, furs,
hides, iron, lumber, and pearl ashes. This was not all. The colonies
were compelled to bring their European purchases back through English
ports, paying duties to the government and commissions to merchants
again.

_The Molasses Act._--Not content with laws enacted in the interest of
English merchants and manufacturers, Parliament sought to protect the
British West Indies against competition from their French and Dutch
neighbors. New England merchants had long carried on a lucrative trade
with the French islands in the West Indies and Dutch Guiana, where sugar
and molasses could be obtained in large quantities at low prices. Acting
on the protests of English planters in the Barbadoes and Jamaica,
Parliament, in 1733, passed the famous Molasses Act imposing duties on
sugar and molasses imported into the colonies from foreign
countries--rates which would have destroyed the American trade with the
French and Dutch if the law had been enforced. The duties, however, were
not collected. The molasses and sugar trade with the foreigners went on
merrily, smuggling taking the place of lawful traffic.

=Effect of the Laws in America.=--As compared with the strict monopoly
of her colonial trade which Spain consistently sought to maintain, the
policy of England was both moderate and liberal. Furthermore, the
restrictive laws were supplemented by many measures intended to be
favorable to colonial prosperity. The Navigation A