s of foreign growth. This law, if enforced, would
have struck a damaging blow at the prosperity of the Northern colonies,
merely to benefit the West India sugar-growers by giving them a
monopoly; but the evidence goes to show that it was systematically
evaded and that French sugar, together with French and Portuguese
wines, was still habitually smuggled into the colonies. Thus the
Navigation Acts, in the only points where they would have been actually
oppressive, were not enforced. The colonial governors saw the serious
consequences and shrank from arousing discontent. It is significant
that the same colonists who contended with the royal governors did not
hesitate to violate a parliamentary law when it ran counter to their
interests.

The only reason why the radical difference {26} between the colonies
and the home government did not cause open conflict long before 1763 is
to be found in the absorption of the English ministries in
parliamentary manoeuvring at home, diplomacy, and European wars. The
weakness of the imperial control was recognized and frequently
complained of by governors, Boards of Trade, and other officials; but
so long as the colonies continued to supply the sugar, furs, lumber and
masts called for by the Acts, bought largely from English shippers and
manufacturers, and stimulated the growth of British shipping, the Whig
and Tory noblemen were content. The rapidly growing republicanism of
the provincial and proprietary governments was ignored and allowed to
develop unchecked. A half-century of complaints from thwarted
governors, teeming with suggestions that England ought to take the
government of the colonies into its own hands, produced no results
beyond creating in official circles an opinion unfavourable to the
colonists.

In the years of the French war, 1754-1760, the utter incompatibility
between imperial theories on the one hand and colonial political habits
on the other, could no longer be disregarded. In the midst of the
struggle, the legislatures continued to wrangle with governors over
points of privilege; they were slow to vote supplies; they were {27}
dilatory in raising troops; they hung back from a jealous fear that
their neighbour colonies might fail to do their share; they were ready
to let British soldiers do all the hard fighting. Worse still, the
colonial shipowners persisted in their trade with the French and
Spanish West Indies, furnishing their enemies with supplies,