Unfortunately, the English government had viewed without compunction the infraction of the Spanish laws, so long as their shipowners and merchants reaped an immense advantage by their clandestine trade. Nor did the dread of perpetual imprisonment and slavery deter their mariners from engaging in this trade. Indeed, when these were wanting, Spanish-Americans supplied the deficiency by vessels of their own; while the governors of the islands connived at the illicit traffic. But a different spirit of morality was now to prevail. Directions were sent out from England to enforce the Navigation Acts in all their strictness: custom-house commissions were issued to the men-of-war, who were ordered to seize, without distinction, all foreign vessels found in any of the ports of the West India Islands; the British government becoming from one extreme of laxity the most strict and energetic repressors of Spanish as well as American smuggling. The result was that their own shipping suffered, and their exports to Jamaica declined 168,000_l._ in one year. In 1766 the ports of Jamaica and Dominica were opened to all foreign vessels whatsoever; but if credit can be given to one of the historians[213] of the West Indies, the Spanish masters of vessels who resorted to Jamaica, having their names reported in the customs’ lists, were thus betrayed to the Spanish authorities, who visited their offences with the most severe punishment. [Sidenote: Effect of the new restrictions.] On the continent of British North America the new duties and the rigorous measures adopted to restrict or put down the trade so long carried on with the French and Spanish settlements speedily produced consequences which the narrow-minded politicians at home did not anticipate. The extinction of the French and Spanish shipping trade caused, as its natural result, a serious diminution of the direct carrying trade between England and the North American colonies, and this, again, depriving them of their accustomed market, prevented their being any longer able to consume British manufactures to the same extent as formerly, or even to discharge debts due to creditors in England. Hence an effect not anticipated: in that the Americans, forming associations to dispense with English manufactures, were led to resort to native industry, and thus to lay the foundation of a permanent rivalry, the end of which cannot even now be conjectured. In short, a national American spirit was evoked, highly antagonistic to British interests. [Sidenote: Passing of the Stamp Act.] [Sidenote: Trade interrupted.]