This navigation law, though it cramped the trade of the colonies, yet it has been attended with many beneficial consequences to Britain: and while she maintained the supreme power of legislation throughout the empire, and wisely regulated the trade and commerce of her foreign settlements, she might reap many and substantial advantages from them. She might render them a market for her manufactures, and at the same time supply herself with such commodities as her northern climate refused, and obliged her to purchase from other nations. By such means she might enlarge her commerce and trade, at the same time she increased her naval strength. It was her interest in a particular manner to encourage settlements in a different climate, the productions of which luxury had made necessary to the support of her domestic dominions. Their articles of product interfered not with those of Britain, and were in no danger of rivalling her at any market. But should the planters in these colonies begin to think themselves entitled to the privileges of raising what productions they please, and of sending them to any market they judged most advantageous to themselves, they would then become colonies equally useful to all the world; and the mother country, who discovered, peopled and protected them, would share no more advantage from them than rival states around her. On this principle Great Britain grounds her right to expect a market for her manufactures in the colonies she planted and nursed, and to regulate their produce and trade in such a channel as to render them only subservient to her own interest. Without this right they would not only be useless to her, but very prejudicial. Colonies planted in the same latitude with the parent state, raising the same productions, and enjoying the same privileges, must in time be both detrimental and dangerous; for while they drain her of inhabitants, they are growing strong upon her ruins. They meet her at the same market with the same commodities, a competition arises between them, and occasions jealousies, quarrels, and animosities. Then she will become sensible of the bad policy of having promoted such colonies, when they prove dangerous rivals in trade and commerce, and when perhaps it is become too late to remedy the evil: for a rival daughter often becomes the more abusive and troublesome, in proportion as she is better acquainted than strangers with the natural fondness and indulgent temper of a tender mother.