After the French and Indian War and the acquisition from France of Canada and the West, the British Government by proclamation in 1763 forbade any settlement in the new regions, the intent being to consider the problem deliberately in the light of Indian and other relations which the colonists had never been able to agree upon among themselves. Owing to procrastination, this temporary, and to the colonists most galling, restriction was not removed. Settlers and traders ignored the proclamation and poured into the new territory, all against the law. In fact, whenever there was profit to be made, the colonists ignored even their own laws. Most colonists had legislated against selling firearms or spirits to the Indians because of the obvious dangers involved, but these laws were constantly transgressed. In New York it was made illegal to trade with the French in Canada by way of Albany because by so doing the French were enabled to strengthen their Indian alliances at the expense of the colonists, but the temptation to profit was too great, and the merchants not only broke[Pg 107] the law, but plotted to secure the removal of the governor whose far-sighted policy had insisted upon its passage. Of even more pernicious effect were the laws of trade. For example, in 1733, owing to the insistence of the West Indian sugar planters, Parliament passed an act placing a prohibitive duty upon the importation into the continental colonies of any molasses from foreign islands. The problem was a triangular one and no attempted solution of it could be fair to all three parties involved. For reasons which we need not go into, had this law been obeyed, the commerce of New England, including its profitable slave trade, would have been ruined. The law was never obeyed, but as a consequence, the New Englanders became a race of smugglers, and the most reputable merchants became lawbreakers. In this case, smuggling and lawbreaking were forced upon them, but, having become used to them, they passed on to smuggling when there was no reason but increased profit. In the French and Indian War, twenty years later, we find the merchants trading with the enemy on a scale which certainly prolonged the war, and in the decade before the Revolution men like John Hancock did not hesitate to smuggle wines on which there was only a moderate duty, and even forcibly to resist the authorities in doing so. As the Revolution drew nearer, the radicals made it a point of patriotic duty to break the English laws, and force and mob violence became more and more common. The Boston Tea Party is a case in point. That wanton destruction of fifty thousand dollars’ worth of private property was in no way essential to the patriotic cause and was condemned by many of the patriot party.