this period were wheat, lumber, corn, flour, pig and bar iron in small quantities, skins and furs; but the total value of all these commodities was estimated in 1761 at only £80.000. [1]
The policy of England was to stifle all manufacturing industry in her colonies, so as to preserve in them a market for her own productions. In pursuance of this system, manufactures were prohibited, and notwithstanding the guaranty given in the charter of Maryland to the contrary,[2] the trade of the colonies was restricted to England and her possessions. Thus thwarted and repressed, Maryland made but little progress in commerce during this period. Beyond the coarse homespun manufactured in private families for their own use, there was nothing deserving the name of manufacture in the Province, excepting the production of iron; and so great was the jealousy with which England looked upon even this enterprise, that in order to discourage it, a bounty was offered upon English iron imported into the colonies.[3] The Assembly of Maryland, in 1719, attempted to counteract this influence by offering a free grant of one hundred acres of land to any one who would put up a furnace or forge. As early as 1749, eight furnaces and nine forges were in operation in the Province;[4] but for the materials for clothing and all the appliances of civilized life, the colonists were kept entirely dependent upon England. In the condition of the shipping, the same state of dependence existed; in restricting the trade of the colonies to English ports, England took care to see that that trade was carried in English bottoms. So that, while in 1761 there were employed in the trade between England and Maryland, one hundred, and twenty vessels of 18,000 tons burthen, the entire shipping of the colony, (which indeed had suffered considerable diminution during the war with the French settlements,) amounted to but thirty vessels of 1,300 tons, chiefly employed in the trade with the English possessions in the West Indies. Notwithstanding that these conditions of commercial dependence upon England were for a long period quietly acquiesced in, the Province gradually grew in strength and population, and in the development of those internal resources which are a necessary condition to the independent existence of every State.
Affairs were in this condition when there came the first mutterings of that storm which was about to break over the American colonies, and amid the
- ↑ McMahon, p. 315.
- ↑ See page 9.
- ↑ McSherry's History of Maryland, page 116. In 1750 an act was passed by the English Parliament, taking the duty off of American iron, but at the same time prohibiting the erection of slitting or rolling mills in the colonies. The object of this measure was the preservation of the English forests from consumption as fuel for furnaces.
- ↑ An interesting relic of the iron manufactories of those days recently came into the possession of the Stickney Iron Company, consisting of two or three pigs of iron discovered at the bed of the Patapeco Riveri just below the city, at a point between Fort Mclleury and the wharf of the Stickney Company's Furnaee. These pigs are corroded and covered with barnacles, but distinctly bear the mark "Principio * 1751," showing that they have probably lain at the bottom of the river for more than a century. The Principio Furnace was erected in Cecil County, about 1715–20.
McMahon, p 316
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