Excerpt from History of the British Colonies, Vol. 3 of 5: Possessions in North America From this period the progress of the British colonies in America was exceedingly great in numbers, and in wealth: a natural spirit of commercial enterprise was fostered by the prudence of the mother country in leaving the colonists at full liberty to prosecute their trade (with very few exceptions) About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.