In a similar economic revolution, the colonies outgrew their mercantile relationship with the mother county and developed an expanding capitalist system on their own. Great Britain practiced only the Mercantile System, which the colonies would supply raw materials to the mother country (Great Britain) and also provided a guaranteed market for exports. Due to this type of system, colonists felt used and wanted to trade with other countries besides Great Britain. Colonists were forced to smuggle when the Molasses Act as issued in 1733, which prohibited trade with the French West Indies. American colonial trade delivered a crippling blow to England when colonists began trading with Spain and France. Colonists received tea from Spain and traded with French fur-traders for such things as beaver pelts. Despite British trading policies, colonies created their own inter-colonial trading system. The south produced agricultural products, the middle colonies known as the “bread colonies” traded grain products, and the northern colonies had exports such as timber and fur. Since the colonies provided and produced different goods, it was inevitable for the colonies to begin trading with one another.
Building on English foundations of political liberty, the colonies extended the concepts of liberty and self-government far beyond those envisioned in the Mother country. In 1619, the House of Burgesses was created by the London Company in Virginia. This was the first of many miniature parliaments to flourish in America. An important event that occurred from 1734-35 was known as the Zenger’s Trial. John Peter Zenger, a newspaper printer, was accused and taken to trail on the account of seditious libel towards a corrupt royal governor of New York. Zenger argued that what was printed was the truth and therefore not libel. He was later charged not guilty. This court case was yet another step towards democracy. The Zenger case helped to establish the doctrine in which true statements about public officials could not be prosecuted as libel. By 1763, the colonies were not totally democratic but they were far more democratic than England. The colonies had a representative government in which freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of assembly were created. Another step way from the type of government that England practiced was the fact that people of different classes could climb up the social ladder and become a political official in government.
In contrast to the well-defined and hereditary classes of England, America developed a fluid class structure, which enabled the industrious individual to rise on the social ladder. In England, there was a society in which wealth was separated into an aristocratic class and the lower class. This societal structure contained no middle class. In North American colonies, a middle class was created consisting of merchants, fur-trappers, artisans, shipbuilders, and small-farm owners. This was the first societal structure that consisted of a lower, middle, and upper class. Also in the colonies, there was more social mobility in which people of lower society could move up the social ranking is really desired. This would have never of occurred in England because it was not simply possible. In England, once a person was poor, he or she would forever remain poor unless a miracle occurred. This could have been another factor as to why people migrated to the New World.
Once Britain won the French and Indian War, it was thought life would finally be good. In fact, this was not the case, it only created more problems within the colonies. The war helped to spur independence among the colonists, which caused them to develop a new vision of their destiny. It was a destiny in which Great Britain was no longer a part of.
