Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 2).djvu/253

 the two countries became impracticable. The rivers and wharfs were deserted; vessels lay in the harbours with their colours hoisted half-mast high; the courts of justice were closed; and instead of a thriving maritime population in the sea-ports, all was neglect and stagnation. A general agreement was entered into by the merchants not to import any more goods from Great Britain, nor to receive any goods on commission consigned from that country after the 1st January, 1766, and as Ireland was exempted from this ban, the seeds of discord were sown among all parties. The Americans even meditated the prohibition of the export of tobacco to Great Britain, but this step would have proved even more fatal to the planters of Virginia and Maryland than to those persons against whom it had been imposed. The resistance to the authority of the mother-country was universal in New England, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and the two Carolinas. But the provinces at the northern and southern extremities of the continent submitted to the authority of the British Crown, as did also the West India Islands, excepting those of St. Christopher and Nevis.

The effects of the Stamp Act in America recoiled with redoubled force upon Great Britain. Most of the merchants connected with the colonial trade suspended payment; while her shipowners felt severely the interruption of commerce between the two countries; the manufacturers and workmen throughout the kingdom were to a large extent thrown out of employment—misfortunes greatly aggravated by the high price of provisions, the vessels laden with them having been embargoed in all the ports. In