ABSTRACT
John Ashley’s Memoirs and Considerations concerning the Trade and Revenues of the British Colonies in America (published in two parts in 1740 and 1743) were in some ways a continuation of his early 1730s The British Empire in America, Considered in three letters to a friend in London. After a brief introduction, the first chapter of Memoirs and Considerations largely comprises a reprint of the Barbadian petition to the King printed in his 1731 letter and mentioned in his 1732 letter. In other ways the tone and content of Memoirs and Considerations are very different from Ashley’s letters of a decade earlier. His complaints about New Englanders’ trade practices and political machinations are more muted and his imputations against New Englanders’ characters disappear altogether. By contrast, Ashley notes that ‘The Northern Colonies are a great Support to the naval Power of Great Britain’ through shipbuilding, naval stores, sailors and trade revenue, as well as revenue raised from exports and imports.
