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 quintals of dried fish were annually exported to Spain, Portugal, and the Mediterranean.

New England then supplied the largest and finest masts in the world. The exportation of rice from Carolina, which in 1733 amounted to thirty-six thousand five hundred and eighty-four barrels, besides considerable quantities of pitch, turpentine, lumber, provisions, and Indian corn, had in 1740 increased to ninety-one thousand one hundred and ten barrels. Georgia, established in 1732 by a society of gentlemen, headed by General Oglethorpe, with the view of producing silk, the worm having been brought from Piedmont, was paving the way for the growth of rice, indigo, and other products suited to her soil and warm climate.

But commercial jealousy bad already seized the English colonists in the West Indies, and had led them to claim an exclusive monopoly of the trade with the colonies on the continent; while, at the same time, the contraband traffic carried on by the French and the Dutch was pressed on the consideration of parliament. Hence it was that a Bill received the sanction of the House of Commons prohibiting, under