contend with royal officers in order to shield American interests
against outside interference.

[Illustration: THE DUTCH WEST INDIA WAREHOUSE IN NEW AMSTERDAM
(NEW YORK CITY)]

Measured against the immense business of modern times, colonial commerce
seems perhaps trivial. That, however, is not the test of its
significance. It must be considered in relation to the growth of English
colonial trade in its entirety--a relation which can be shown by a few
startling figures. The whole export trade of England, including that to
the colonies, was, in 1704, £6,509,000. On the eve of the American
Revolution, namely, in 1772, English exports to the American colonies
alone amounted to £6,024,000; in other words, almost as much as the
whole foreign business of England two generations before. At the first
date, colonial trade was but one-twelfth of the English export business;
at the second date, it was considerably more than one-third. In 1704,
Pennsylvania bought in English markets goods to the value of £11,459; in
1772 the purchases of the same colony amounted to £507,909. In short,
Pennsylvania imports increased fifty times within sixty-eight years,
amounting in 1772 to almost the entire export trade of England to the
colonies at the opening of the century. The American colonies were
indeed a great source of wealth to English merchants.

=Intercolonial Commerce.=--Although the bad roads of colonial times made
overland transportation difficult and costly, the many rivers and
harbors along the coast favored a lively water-borne trade among the
colonies. The Connecticut, Hudson, Delaware, and Susquehanna rivers in
the North and the many smaller rivers in the South made it possible for
goods to be brought from, and carried to, the interior regions in little