[Sidenote] Foreign colonies encouraged from views of commercial advantage. During the period of the usurpation in England, when the great councils of the nation were under the direction of men of mean birth and little education, the considerations of mercantile profit became connected with those of dominion and the higher springs of government. After the conquest of Jamaica, it was resolved, that the nation should make a commercial profit of every colony that had been, or should be, planted in the western world. At the Restoration the same turn in politics was also adopted, and the parliament which brought about that great event made a law, by which it was enacted, that no sugar, cotton, wool, indigo, ginger, fustic, or other dying wood, of the growth of any English plantation in Asia, Africa, or America, should be transported to any other place than to some English plantation, or to England, Ireland, Wales, and Berwick upon Tweed, upon pain of forfeiture of ship and goods; that, for every vessel sailing from England, Ireland, Wales, and Berwick upon Tweed, bond shall be given, with security of one or two thousand pounds sterling, money of Great Britain, that if she load any of the said commodities at such plantations, she shall bring them to some port of these English dominions. And for every vessel coming to the said plantations the governor shall, before she be permitted to load, take such bond as aforesaid, that she shall carry such commodities to England, Ireland, Wales, or Berwick upon Tweed. This laid the foundation of what was afterwards called _enumerated commodities_; and to these already mentioned, rice, hemp, copper ore, beaver skins, and naval stores, were afterwards added, and, with some exceptions, subjected to the same restraint.