Before the Grenville Act of 1764 no measures had been taken to relieve the Exchequer from demands on account of the colonies. The people and the government had suffered the mercantile and manufacturing classes to dictate their colonial policy. Not that the prosperity of these classes did not contribute to the general prosperity of the realm; for, on the contrary, it had made Great Britain the most affluent and powerful country on the globe. But this system did not promote the welfare of all classes alike; and when the time came, as it did after the frightful expenditure in the French War, that the Chancellor of the Exchequer was compelled to ask for ready money to pay the interest on the debt and to meet current expenses, neither the merchants nor the manufacturers, who had grown rich by the war, offered on that account to pay larger taxes, but they were quite willing that the British farmer should do so, or that a revenue should be sought from the American colonies. Some account of these famous laws is essential at this point. There were three statutes embraced under the general term Navigation Laws and Acts of Trade, in which are to be found the principles of the Mercantile System. They were passed in 1660, 1663, and 1672, during the reign of Charles II., and may be found in the _Statutes at Large_,[13] with the following titles respectively: "An Act for the Encouraging and Increasing of Shipping and Navigation", "An Act for the Encouragement of Trade", and "An Act for the Encouragement of the Greenland and Eastland Trades, and for the Better Securing the Plantation Trade."[14] The navigation laws will be more readily understood if we attend solely to their effect on the American colonies, and disregard unimportant exceptions and limitations. By the act of 1660, none but English or colonial ships could carry goods to or bring them from the colonies. This excluded all foreigners, and especially the Dutch, who at that time were the principal carriers for Europe. The result was that the colonists lost the advantage of their competition. Far more serious was the provision which restricted them from carrying sugar, tobacco, cotton, wool, indigo, ginger, fustic and all other dyeing wood, the product of any English colony, to any part of the world, except Great Britain, or some other English colony. This affected the English sugar islands of the West Indies and the Southern colonies, which were obliged to send their products to the overstocked English or colonial markets, more than it affected New England, whose great staples, lumber, fish, oil, ashes, and furs, were free to find their best market, provided only they were sent in English or colonial vessels.