Had the English government the wit and policy to have let this new settlement alone all would have been well; but the England of those days had yet to learn, from the costly experience of the American Revolution, that art of governing colonies in which she is today without peer. After the final crushing of the Irish at the Battle of the Boyne, in which the new Ulster population was of no small assistance, the English merchants grew jealous of the trade, manufactures and aggressive competition of the Province and in 1698 succeeded in obtaining from Parliament restrictive laws which all but ruined her industries, particularly in linen and woolen then, as now, outstanding. And now to the ruin of their trades was to be added religious coercion. Although, as we have seen, a Toleration Act had been passed for England in 1689, it was not until nearly one hundred years later that in 1782 the Toleration Act for Ireland became law. From 1704 on there was a great effort to force the Presbyterians of Ulster, as well as those of Scotland, to conform to the English Church and those who refused were forbidden to keep schools, marriages performed by their ministers were declared invalid and other civil disabilities were imposed. By 1719 the people of Ulster had been made desperate by this senseless interference and persecution and they, too, began to flock to America. As with the others, the movement, once started, grew rapidly and in this instance reached such proportions that it became by far the greatest immigration that, until the later day of steam, was to come to America's shores. Again Philadelphia appears to have been the chief port to receive them, as many as six shiploads landing there in one week alone. Before the emigration was eased by the Toleration Act and a generally saner attitude in England, it is estimated that half a million of the Scotch-Irish had crossed the Atlantic, carrying with them a deep resentment toward England, for which she later was to pay a heavy price in the stubborn and valiant support these people and their descendants gave to the American side in the war of the Revolution.