With the passing of the crisis, conditions might have improved but for the trouble with the American colonies, which hampered trade more than almost anything else could have done. This was inevitable owing to the character of the trade with these colonies. The northern colonies imported much from Great Britain, but exported little directly to this country. The imports were paid for by the colonies exporting to the West Indies and to the Continent, and by their carrying trade. Thus a check to American trade dislocated the circle of commerce and imposed a check all round.[289] The trade was so important that during a considerable part of the period over which the trouble extended it was carried on regardless of prohibitions, which, rather than lessening the volume of the trade, checked its expansion, and increased its uncertainty.[290] When the position was more serious, as in the months intervening between the passing of the Stamp Act in 1765 and its repeal in the following year, Parliament was belaboured with petitions from the trading and manufacturing towns, in which attention was drawn to the character of the trade, to the derangement caused by its stoppage, and to the effect upon the working population already in a state of rebellion owing to the high cost of living.[291] [Footnote 289: _Ibid._, pp. 396-397. “This trade united all the advantages which the wisest and most philanthropic philosopher, or the most enlightened legislator, could wish to derive from commerce. It gave bread to the industrious in North America by carrying off their lumber, which must otherwise rot on their hands, and their fish, great part of which without it would be absolutely unsaleable, together with their spare produce and stock of every kind; it furnished the West India planters with those articles without which the operations of their plantations must be at a stand; and it produced a fund for employing a great number of industrious manufacturers in Great Britain; thus taking off the superfluities, providing for the necessities, and promoting the happiness of all concerned.” _Cf._ Bryan Edwards, _History of the West Indies_, Book IV., ch. iv. (1801 edition). Pitman, _The Development of the British West Indies_ (1917), pp. 212, 256-257, 271-273, 320, 360, also the charts (pp. 244, 264), showing the balance of trade between the West Indies and England.] [Footnote 290: Macpherson, _ibid._, p. 589.] [Footnote 291: _Ibid._, pp. 442-443.] Such were the general conditions when the jenny was introduced into the cotton manufacture, and, in the circumstances, the attack made upon it is not difficult to understand. A riotous and destructive spirit was abroad, engendered by the conditions of the time. To smash a machine, which apparently would reduce the demand for labour, must have appeared to a disinterested spectator almost as a praiseworthy act.