ABSTRACT
In the period of truce between the close of the War of the Austrian Succession and the opening of the Seven Years’ War, illicit commerce continued along the lines that had proved so profitable. Many interesting testimonies on West India commerce from 1733 to 1750 were made by naval officers, merchants, and traders. If the plantation duties had been scrupulously collected, they would have constituted undoubtedly too great a burden on colonial commerce. The extensiveness and universality of trade with the French, even in war time, indicate how interdependent British North America and the French islands were and how hopelessly opposed the Molasses Act was to the natural course of commerce. Commerce with the French West Indies had thus got far beyond the stage of being merely illegal, that is, a violation of the Molasses Act, which everyone in the North seems to have ignored, it had become traitorous.
