The American plantations, as they were called, increased so rapidly in commerce that, according to the last author referred to, they did, even in the year 1670, employ nearly two-thirds of all our English shipping, “and therefore gave constant sustenance, it may be, to 200,000 persons here at home.”  At this period New England seems to have directed its chief attention and industry to the cod and mackerel fisheries, which had increased their ships and seamen so much as to excite the jealousy of Sir Josiah Child, who, however, admits that what that colony took from England amounted to ten times more than what England took from it.  The Newfoundland fishery, he says, had declined from 250 ships in 1605, to eighty in 1670:  this he ascribes to the practice of eating fish alone on fast days, not being so strictly kept by the Catholics as formerly.  From Carolina, during the seventeenth century, England obtained vast quantities of naval stores, staves, lumber, hemp, flax, and Indian corn.  About the end of this century, or at the very commencement of the next, the culture of rice was introduced by the accident of a vessel from Madagascar happening to put into Carolina, which had a little rice left; this the captain gave to a gentleman, who sowed it.

The colony of Virginia seems to have flourished at an earlier period than any of the other English colonies.  In the year 1618, considerable quantities of tobacco were raised there; and it appears, by proclamations of James I. and Charles I., that no tobacco was allowed to be imported into England, but what came from Virginia or the Bermudas.

The colony of Pennsylvania was not settled by Pen till the year 1680:  he found there, however, many English families, and a considerable number of Dutch and Swedes.  The wise regulations of Pen soon drew to him industrious settlers; but the commerce in which they engaged did not become so considerable as to demand our notice.

III.  The commercial intercourse of England with India, which has now grown to such extent and importance, and from which has sprung the anomaly of merchant-sovereigns over one of the richest and most populous districts of the globe, began in the reign of Elizabeth.  The English Levant Company, in their attempts to extend their trade with the East, seem first to have reached Hindostan, in 1584, with English merchandize.  About the same time the queen granted introductory letters to some adventurers to the king of Cambaya; these men travelled through Bengal to Pegu and Malacca, but do not seem to have reached China.  They, however, obtained much useful information respecting the best mode of conducting the trade to the East.