The idea of building up national wealth at the expense of rivals. Money is power, so there was a need to prevent rivals from building and acquiring wealth. So, they controlled trade during the time of the American Revolution by penalizing colonists for buying outside goods by charging much higher duties.
How did people get around paying the higher duties?
-Smuggling
-They would also pay off or bribe the officials in order to get around them.
Britain needed to control the colonies, they were costing more money than they were making and Britain relied on the money coming over from America. Trade was a huge loophole that people were taking advantage of, so to fix it Britain enacted new legislation for the custom inspectors. Many of the custom inspectors were still in Britain, they had never even left England, but they were accepting salaries for the job. The new legislation said they had to actually be at work in order to do their job. Some inspectors would just hire and send deputies to do their job and pay them a percentage of their salary. These deputies were much more likely to be corrupted. The new legislation also said that they were to report any colonist going against England, and that they were to report any custom inspector not doing his job properly. Britain was even willing to send troops to America to support and protect the inspectors from the lawless colonists who might refuse to pay their duties.
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