Part of the appeal by Andrew Hamilton in the defense of John Peter Zenger was that the colonists were British citizens and were to be treated like British citizens. This sounded fine, but, in fact, the colonists were not treated as if they were citizens of England. A different set of laws applied to the colonists.
The merchants and manufacturers in England were instrumental in having laws established that were one-sided, favoring people in England over the people in the Colonies. By these laws the colonists were forbidden to manufacture any articles which could be procured in England, especially cloth and iron articles, such as nails. No hats, no paper, no ploughshares, no horseshoes were to be made in the Colonies. Clothing was to be imported from England.
Manufactured articles were to be procured in England. They were to be shipped in English vessels to the Colonies. No goods, such as tobacco, cotton, hides, furs, wool, or lumber were to be shipped from the colonies to any country except England.
We have seen traces of this in the complaints of the Germans in Virginia, that the price of clothing was high. It also had an impact on Alexander Spotswood's consideration of an iron furnace. Iron was a gray area as it was not clearly defined as a raw material which the colonies could supply or as finished goods which was to be purchased in England. When Spotswood proposed to the Board of Trade that the Colony of Virginia be allowed to smelt and cast iron, the Board informed him that any enabling legislation to this end must include a suspension clause. That is, if there were objections in England to the manufacture of iron in the colonies, the merchants in England could demand that iron production cease. This is why it took ten years for Spotswood to get into the iron smelting business, and even then he approached it very cautiously. He had to wait until he had powerful friends in England who would support him in an "iron works".
As one reads American history in the colonial era, he/she begins to understand that the seeds of revolution were sown many decades before the War of Independence. If the British had truly treated the people in the colonies as British citizens, there might never have been a Revolution.
(18 Aug 03)
We gratefully acknowledge the work of John Blankenbaker who published over 2,500 Germanna History Notes via the Germanna-L@rootsweb.com email list from 1997 to 2008. We are equally thankful to George Durman (Sgt. George) for hosting the list and republishing the notes via rootsweb.com.