But commercial intercourse was soon afterwards opened by the British American colonies with France and Holland, which was connived at by both countries in spite of authoritative prohibitions and representations by the court of Great Britain. While the American colonists refused to have any trading intercourse with England, the Parliament of this country, in spite of the petitions of its shipowners and parties interested, and actuated by the same unwise and unaccountable policy, passed an Act to prevent the New Englanders from fishing on the coasts of Newfoundland, Labrador, or Nova Scotia, and declaring all vessels thus employed liable to seizure after the 20th of July, 1775. But before that time the fatal blow had been struck which led to a total severance of peaceful relations between the two countries. The inhabitants of the northern and southern provinces joined in a confederation against the British with all the vigour and well-known energy of their race; casting cannon, and employing themselves in learning military exercises with such a menacing attitude that Governor Gage seized the ammunition and stores lodged near Boston, thus causing an open rupture. The skirmish at Lexington followed, where sixty men were killed on each side; and the king’s forces were besieged in Boston. The military ardour of the Americans augmented as the crisis approached, their rulers at once assuming, after the oppression to which they had been subjected, the justifiable powers of an independent executive under the title, at first, of the UNITED COLONIES, with all the functions of a government _de facto_. The war with the Colonies then broke out. To trace the details of the struggle, which terminated in the separation of these vast regions from the British Empire, is not within the scope of this work, but it will be necessary to give as comprehensive a view of the state of our shipping business with America at that important epoch as our space will admit of: the documents published by both countries are very numerous. [Sidenote: Position of the colonists.] [Sidenote: Fisheries.]