employed in it, which would be nearly useless, at 100,000 pounds;
the provisions used in it, the casks for packing fish, and other
articles, at 22,700 pounds and upwards: to all which there was to
be added the loss of the advantage of sending lumber, horses,
provisions, and other commodities to the foreign plantations as
cargoes, the vessels employed to carry the fish to Spain and
Portugal, the dismissing of 5,000 seamen from their employment,"
besides many other losses, all arising from the very simple fact
that the British islands to which the trade of the colonies was
virtually confined by the Sugar Act could furnish no suffcient
market for the products of New England, to say nothing of the
middle colonies, nor a tithe of the molasses and other
commodities now imported from the foreign islands in exchange.

Of the things taken in exchange, silver, in coin and bullion, was
not the least important, since it was essential for the
"remittances to England for goods imported into the provinces,"
remittances which during the last eighteen months, it was said,
"had been made in specie to the amount of 150,000 pounds besides
90,000 pounds in Treasurer's bills for the reimbursement money."
Any man must thus see, since even Governor Bernard was convinced
of it, that the new duties would drain the colony of all its hard
money, and so, as the Governor said, "There will be an end of the
specie currency in Massachusetts." And with her trade half gone
and her hard money entirely so, the old Bay colony would have to
manufacture for herself those very commodities which English
merchants were so desirous of selling in America.

The Sugar Act was thus made out to be, even from the point of
view of English merchants, an economic blunder; but in the eyes