During the early part of the eighteenth century, while Europe was distracted by war, the American colonies were, “by peaceful and undisturbed pursuits, laying the foundation of that prosperity which enabled them, before the close of the century, to demand and obtain their severance from the mother country, and their social and political independence.” So early as 1729, Philadelphia had 6,000 tons of shipping, and received in that year 6,208 emigrants from Great Britain. New York was then carrying on a large trade in grain and provisions with Spain and Portugal, besides forwarding considerable quantities of furs to England. New England was furnishing the finest spars and masts in the world, while that part of it which is now the State of Massachusetts had already 120,000 inhabitants, employing 40,000 tons of shipping, or about 600 vessels of all sizes. The fisheries were of great value, as much as a quarter of a million quintals of dried fish being annually exported to Spain, Portugal, and the Mediterranean. Carolina was doing a magnificent business in the export of rice, Indian corn, and provisions of all kinds; in pitch, turpentine, and lumber. But one serious evil caused the colonists great annoyance and loss—the prevalence of piracy. The State last named suffered far more than the rest. Commercial restrictions, unwisely imposed by Great Britain, gave rise to a large amount of smuggling, and from smuggling to piracy was an easy transition. “These gangs of naval robbers were likewise frequently recruited by British sailors, who had been trained to ferocity and injustice by the legalised piracy of the slave-trade.”(17) One Captain Quelch, the commander of a vessel which had committed numerous piracies, ventured to take shelter, with his crew, in Massachusetts in the year 1704. He was detected, tried, and hanged, with six of his accomplices, in Boston. In 1717 several vessels were captured on the coasts of New England by a noted pirate, Captain Bellamy, a man who carried matters with a high hand, having a vessel with twenty-three guns, and a crew of one hundred and thirty men. The vessel was wrecked shortly afterwards on Cape Cod, the captain and the whole of his crew, except six, perishing in the waves. The pitiful remainder gained the shore, their fate literally realising Defoe’s words— “When what the sea would not, the gallows may;”