[Illustration:  THE DUTCH WEST INDIA WAREHOUSE IN NEW AMSTERDAM (NEW YORK CITY)]

Measured against the immense business of modern times, colonial commerce seems perhaps trivial.  That, however, is not the test of its significance.  It must be considered in relation to the growth of English colonial trade in its entirety—­a relation which can be shown by a few startling figures.  The whole export trade of England, including that to the colonies, was, in 1704, L6,509,000.  On the eve of the American Revolution, namely, in 1772, English exports to the American colonies alone amounted to L6,024,000; in other words, almost as much as the whole foreign business of England two generations before.  At the first date, colonial trade was but one-twelfth of the English export business; at the second date, it was considerably more than one-third.  In 1704, Pennsylvania bought in English markets goods to the value of L11,459; in 1772 the purchases of the same colony amounted to L507,909.  In short, Pennsylvania imports increased fifty times within sixty-eight years, amounting in 1772 to almost the entire export trade of England to the colonies at the opening of the century.  The American colonies were indeed a great source of wealth to English merchants.

=Intercolonial Commerce.=—­Although the bad roads of colonial times made overland transportation difficult and costly, the many rivers and harbors along the coast favored a lively water-borne trade among the colonies.  The Connecticut, Hudson, Delaware, and Susquehanna rivers in the North and the many smaller rivers in the South made it possible for goods to be brought from, and carried to, the interior regions in little sailing vessels with comparative ease.  Sloops laden with manufactures, domestic and foreign, collected at some city like Providence, New York, or Philadelphia, skirted the coasts, visited small ports, and sailed up the navigable rivers to trade with local merchants who had for exchange the raw materials which they had gathered in from neighboring farms.  Larger ships carried the grain, live stock, cloth, and hardware of New England to the Southern colonies, where they were traded for tobacco, leather, tar, and ship timber.  From the harbors along the Connecticut shores there were frequent sailings down through Long Island Sound to Maryland, Virginia, and the distant Carolinas.

=Growth of Towns.=—­In connection with this thriving trade and industry there grew up along the coast a number of prosperous commercial centers which were soon reckoned among the first commercial towns of the whole British empire, comparing favorably in numbers and wealth with such ports as Liverpool and Bristol.  The statistical records of that time are mainly guesses; but we know that Philadelphia stood first in size among these towns.  Serving as the port of entry for Pennsylvania, Delaware, and western Jersey, it had drawn within its borders, just before the Revolution, about 25,000 inhabitants.