"Historians, in treating of the American rebellion, have confined their arguments too exclusively to the question of internal taxation, and the right or policy of exercising this prerogative. The true source of the rebellion lay deeper, in our traditional colonial policy. Just as the Spaniards had been excited to the discovery of America by the hope of obtaining gold and silver, the English merchants utilized the discovery by the same fallacious method, and with the same fallacious aspirations. … A hundred years ago the commercial classes believed that the prime object of their pursuits was to get as much gold and silver into England as they could. They sought, therefore, to make their country, as nearly as they might, a solitary centre of the exportation of non-metallic commodities, that so she might be also the great reservoir into which the precious metals would flow in a return stream. On this base their colonial policy was erected. … So long as the colonies remained in their infancy the mercantile policy was less prejudicial to their interests. The monopoly of their commerce, the limitation of their markets, the discouragement of their manufactures, in some cases amounting to absolute prohibition, were all less fatal in a country where labour was dear, than they would be in a state where population was more fully developed and land had become scarcer. … A contraband trade sprung up between them and the colonies of Spain. Our settlers imported goods from England, and re-exported them to the Spanish colonies, in return for bullion and other commodities. The result of this was that the Spanish colonists had access to useful commodities from which they would otherwise have been debarred, that the American colonists could without distress remit the specie which was required by the nature of their dealings with England, and that a large market was opened for English products. This widely beneficial trade was incontinently suppressed in 1764, by one of those efforts of short-sighted rigour which might be expected from any government where George Grenville's influence was prominent. All smuggling was to be put down, and as this trade was contraband, it must be put down like the rest. The Government probably acted as they did in answer to the prayers of the mercantile classes, who could not see that they were cutting off the streams that fed their own prosperity. They only saw that a colonial trade had sprung up, and their jealousy blinded them to the benefits that accrued to themselves as a consequence of it. Their folly found them out. The suppression of the colonial trade was entrusted to the commanders of men-of-war. … We may be sure that the original grievance of the colonists was not softened by the manners of the officers who had to put the law into execution.