From a legal point of view, the immense activity of New England was for the most part illicit. In serene ignorance the New England sailor penetrated all harbors, conveying in their holds, from the North, where they belonged, various sorts of interdicted merchandise, and bringing home cargoes equally interdicted from all ports they touched. The merchants, who since 1749, through Hutchinson's excellent statesmanship, had been free from the results of a bad currency, greatly throve. The shipyards teemed with fleets, each nook of the coast was the seat of mercantile ventures. It was then that in all the shore towns arose the fine colonial mansions of the traders along the main streets, that are even admired today for their size and comeliness. Within the houses bric-a-brac from every clime came to abound, and the merchants and their wives and children were clothed gaily in rich fabrics from remote regions. Glowing reports of the gaiety and luxury of the colonies reached the mother country.[21] The merchants and sailors were, to a man, law-breakers. It was this universal law-breaking, after the fall of Quebec, that the English ministry undertook to stop over its extended empire. This caused friction, which gave rise to fire, which increased until the ties with the mother land were quite consumed. [21] Gordon's History of the American War, Vol. I., page 157. As early as 1762 there were loud complaints in Parliament of the administration of custom houses in the colonies. Grenville found on examination that the whole revenue derived by England from the custom houses in America amounted only to between one and two thousand pounds a year, and that for the purpose of collecting this revenue the English exchequer was paying annually between seven and eight thousand pounds. Nine-tenths, probably, of all the tea, wine, fruit, sugar and molasses consumed in the colonies, were smuggled. Grenville determined to terminate this state of affairs. Several new revenue officers were appointed with more rigid rules for the discharge of their duties. "Writs of assistance" were to be issued, authorizing custom house officers to search any house they pleased for smuggled goods. English ships of war were at the same time stationed off the American coast for the purpose of intercepting smugglers. Adam Smith, writing in 1776, says: "Parliament, in attempting to exercise its supposed right, whether well or ill-grounded, of taxing the colonies, _has never hitherto demanded of them anything which even approached to a just proportion to what was paid by their fellow subjects at home_. Great Britain has hitherto suffered her subjects and subordinate provinces to disburden themselves upon her of almost the whole expense."