The great interest at stake was the interest of trade. Domestic trade was fostered and protected. Peddling was prohibited as injurious to regular traffic. Pains were taken to secure uniformity of weights and measures. In all this no power was assumed which the spirit if not the letter of the charter did not fully grant. But the act of navigation had raised up an enemy to foreign trade which in time of war encouraged privateering and in time of peace led to piracy. The treaty of Ryswick left many hardy spirits afloat, greedy for gold and unscrupulous in their pursuit of it. The American coast offered great facilities for smuggling, and it was only as smugglers that pirates or privateersmen could convert their prizes into money. Much of this money it is said was buried in retired nooks of the inlets and bays along the coast. The royal revenues suffered greatly by this illicit trade, and the royal agents accused the colonists of openly favoring it. "The people of New York," wrote Lord Bellemont to the Board of Trade, "have such an appetite for piracy and unlawful trade that they are ready to rebel as often as the government puts the law in execution against them." Rhode Island was held to be a favorite resort of these bold adventurers. Both Cranston her Governor, and John Greene her Deputy-Governor were accused of favoring them. Greene, who had been elected ten years in succession, was dropped in 1700, but Cranston was reëlected from year to year, thirty years in succession. Meanwhile Bellemont, whose hostility was embittered by the instigations of Randolph, went on collecting document upon document, till the formidable list amounted to twenty-five heads of accusation--chief of which was connivance with pirates--and, as he wrote to the Board of Trade, "making Rhode Island their sanctuary." Should the Board of Trade accept these accusations, what could preserve the Colony from a quo warranto? Nothing did save her but the death of the Royal Governor. To this period belongs the story of Captain Kidd, long the subject of many a fearful tradition and all the more widely known from having exchanged an admiral's flag for the black flag of the corsair. After a wild and adventurous career in the Indian ocean he came to the American coast, and showing himself boldly in the streets of Boston was arrested, sent to England for trial and hanged. CHAPTER XVI. COLONIAL PROSPERITY.--DIFFICULTIES OCCASIONED BY THE WAR WITH THE FRENCH.--DOMESTIC AFFAIRS OF THE COLONY.