adjusted without revolution and without independence. The
commercial question, however, involving money rights, and
implying the privilege and power of the Mother Country to take
from the Colonists their property, however small the amount,
could but engender resistance, and if the claim were not
relinquished could but lead to war and disruption.

The neglected growth of the Colonies had in the meantime
established in the seaboard towns of America, usages and customs
which were repugnant to British notions of regular and orderly
government. The commercial life had taken a form of its own.

The Americans had built ships and warehouses. They had engaged
in commerce as they would. They had made their trade as free as
possible. They had ignored the old Navigation Act, and when the
Importation Act was passed, it confronted a condition in America.

It applied to a state of affairs that already existed.

The American ship, trading with the West Indies and bringing back
to Boston a cargo of molasses or rum, was met at custom house
with an exorbitant requisition. The officer acting under the
Importation Act, virtually said, "Stand and deliver."

If it were a British ship the resistance to the duty would be
offered by the land merchants rather than by the sea traders; for
the merchants did not desire that the cost of the merchandise to
themselves and their customers should be doubled without some
equivalent advantage. No equivalent advantage was either visible
or invisible. What, therefore, should they do but first evade