these products a fleet of at least two hundred vessels was employed;
they were built in the colonies north of Virginia, and most of them in New
England. The vessels themselves were often sold abroad. With the proceeds
of the exports the colonists bought the manufactured articles which they
prized. Under the Navigation Acts these ought all to have come from
England; but French silks, Holland gin, and Martinique sugar somehow found
their way into the colonies. The colonists and the home government tried
to establish new industries by granting bounties. Thus the indigo culture
in South Carolina was begun, and many unsuccessful attempts were made to
start silk manufactures and wine raising. The method of stimulating
manufactures by laying protective duties was not unknown; but England
could not permit the colonies to discriminate against home merchants, and
had no desire to see them establish by protective duties competitors for
English manufactures. Nevertheless, Pennsylvania did in a few cases lay
low protective duties. Except for the sea-faring pursuits of the Northern
colonies, the whole continental group was in the same dependent condition.
The colonists raised their own food and made their own clothes; the
surplus of their crops was sent abroad and converted into manufactured
goods.

10. COLONIAL SLAVERY.


[Sidenote: Slave trade.]
[Sidenote: The sections.]

In appearance the labor system of all the colonies was the same. Besides
paid white laborers, there was everywhere a class of white servants bound
without wages for a term of years, and a more miserable class of negro
slaves. From Nova Scotia to Georgia, in all the West Indies, in the