With the appointment of these Governors all administrative interference on the part of the Government at home practically ended. The superintendence of the colonies rested with a Board for Trade and Plantations, which, though itself without executive power, advised the Secretary of State for the Southern Department, within which America was included. But for two centuries they were left by a happy neglect to themselves. It was wittily said at a later day that "Mr. Grenville lost America because he read the American despatches, which none of his predecessors ever did." There was little room indeed for any interference within the limits of the colonies. Their privileges were secured by royal charters. Their Assemblies alone exercised the right of internal taxation, and they exercised it sparingly. Walpole, like Pitt afterwards, set roughly aside the project for an American excise. "I have Old England set against me," he said, "by this measure, and do you think I will have New England too?" America, in fact, contributed to England's resources not by taxation, but by the monopoly of her trade. It was from England that she might import, to England alone that she might send her exports. She was prohibited from manufacturing her own products, or from exporting them in any but a raw state for manufacture in the mother country. But even in matters of trade the supremacy of the mother country was far from being a galling one. There were some small import duties, but they were evaded by a well-understood system of smuggling. The restriction of trade with the colonies to Great Britain was more than compensated by the commercial privileges which the Americans enjoyed as British subjects. [Sidenote: French aggression.]