The selfish and short-sighted policy of this protective system found its culminating point in the treatment of Ireland and the American plantations. The former was forbidden all manufacture which might either directly or indirectly compete with English industry, and was compelled to deal exclusively with England; the American colonies were forbidden to weave cloth, to make hats, or to forge a bolt, and were compelled to take all the manufactured goods required for their consumption from England. The freedom and expansion of international commerce was further hampered by the policy of assigning monopolies of colonial and foreign trade to close Chartered Companies. This policy, however, defensible as an encouragement of early mercantile adventure, was carried far beyond these legitimate limits in the eighteenth century. In England the East Indian was the most powerful and successful of these companies, but the assignment of the trade with Turkey, Russia, and other countries to chartered companies was a distinct hindrance to the development of foreign trade. Our foreign trade at that period might indeed be classed or graded in accordance with the degree of encouragement or discouragement offered by the State. Imports would fall into four classes. 1. Imports forbidden either (_a_) by legislative prohibition, or (_b_) by prohibitive taxation. 2. Imports admitted but taxed. 3. Free imports. 4. Imports encouraged by bounties. Exports might be graded in similar fashion. 1. Prohibited exports (_e.g._, sheep and wool, raw hides, tanned leather, woollen yarn, textile implements,[12] certain forms of skilled labour). 2. Exports upon which duties are levied (_e.g._, coals[13]). 3. Free exports. 4. Exports encouraged by bounties, or by drawbacks. The unnatural and injurious character of most of this legislation is best proved by the notable inability to effectively enforce its application. The chartered companies were continually complaining of the infringement of their monopolies by private adventurers, and more than one of them failed through inability to crush out this illegal competition. A striking condemnation of our policy towards France consisted in the growth of an enormous illicit trade which, in spite of the difficulties which beset it, made a considerable part of our aggregate foreign trade during the whole of the century. The lack of any clear perception of the mutuality of advantage in foreign and colonial trade was the root fallacy which underlay these restrictions. Professor Cunningham rightly says of the colonial policy of England, that it "implied that each distinct member should strengthen the head, and not at all that these members should mutually strengthen each other."[14]