But most trades in the colonies failed of the natural protection which arises from cheap labor, while the opportunities of acquiring lands and establishing homes with ample acres about them served further to increase the difficulties of competition with the Old World, in that artisans were attracted by lures of this kind to the new settlements, and away from the shops of the towns. * * * * * The commerce of the colonies easily fell into four different channels: one took produce to England, or to such foreign lands as the navigation laws permitted; the second bound the colonies one with the other in the bonds of reciprocal trade; a third was opened with the Indians; and the fourth embraced all that surreptitious venture which was known as smuggling. The ports of New York and Philadelphia absorbed the foreign and transatlantic trade of the middle colonies, notwithstanding the efforts which New Jersey made to draw a share of it to Perth Amboy. Before Governor Dongan’s time, ships coming to Amboy had to make entry at New York, as it was feared that goods brought to the New Jersey port and not paying New York duties might be smuggled to New York by way of Staten Island. “Two or three ships came in there [at Amboy] last year,” writes Governor Dongan in 1687, “with goods, and I am sure that country cannot, even with West Jersey, consume £1,000 in goods in 2 years, so that the rest must have been run into this colony.” Some years later the Lords of Trade decided that the charter did not give to either West or East Jersey the right to a port of entry, but she, nevertheless, in due time obtained the right to open such ports at Amboy and Burlington. The displeasure of the New York authorities was manifest in the refusal of their governor to make proclamation of such decree, and the larger province was strong enough occasionally to seize a vessel bound for Amboy. New Jersey could protest; but her indignation was in vain, and she never succeeded in establishing a lucrative commerce. How steadily the commerce of her neighbor increased is shown in the record that in 1737 New York had 53 ships with an aggregate of 3,215 tons; in 1747, there were 99 ships of 4,313 tons; and in 1749, 157 with a capacity of 6,406 tons. The records of the New York custom-house show that the articles imported from abroad or from the other British colonies on this continent and from the West Indies were principally rum, madeira wine, cocoa, European goods, and occasionally a negro slave,[491] while the exports of the colonies were fish and provisions.