Nations acquire new territories, and maintain and defend them, to promote their own interests, and not the interests of those who inhabit them; still less the interests of other nationalities. This has been the case in all ages and under all forms of government, to which our own age and nation form no exception. By the right of discovery the British crown became possessed of the territory included in the thirteen American colonies, settled mainly by British subjects. Lands were granted to individuals, or companies, with the expectation that they would build up prosperous communities, to contribute by their products and trade to the wealth of the mother country. On these purely selfish considerations she protected them; and when their trade was grown to be considerable and their markets valuable, the British merchants took measures to secure both, instead of sharing them with other nations, or allowing them to follow the interests of the colonists. Such was the policy of Great Britain at the dictation of the mercantile class; and in the maintenance of that policy, in sixty years between 1714 and 1774, she paid out of her Exchequer the enormous sum of £34,697,142 sterling, a sum greater than the estimated value of the whole real and personal property in the colonies.[11] Between 1660 and 1770 Parliament enacted various laws whose enforcement produced irritation from the beginning, and had no inconsiderable influence in promoting the final rupture. These acts may be classed as,—First, navigation laws, designed to secure the naval and maritime supremacy of Great Britain throughout the world; these were aimed at the Dutch. Second, acts of trade, procured by the mercantile class, to monopolize the trade of the British colonies. Like the corn-laws of a later generation, these formed part of the protective system, and were dictated by class interest. Third, acts for the protection of British manufactures by preventing their growth in the colonies, where their best market was found. Fourth, acts designed to secure the strict execution of the preceding acts by establishing colonial admiralty courts, custom-houses, and boards of customs. Fifth, acts which imposed and regulated duties and port charges in commercial towns. In no sense were these acts for revenue, British or colonial. They brought nothing into the British Exchequer, but drew large sums from it.[12] They were passed solely in the interest of the mercantile and manufacturing classes, whose protection had much to do with bringing on the Revolution, but whose clamors happily prevented efficient measures for its suppression. These demonstrations, which gained them great credit in the colonies, grew out of their fear of losing not only the £4,000,000 due by their colonial debtors, but also their future trade.