reciting the restrictions upon the trade that existed on each side, and the desire and intention that prevailed of removing them, goes on to provide, that, upon the vessels of the United States admitted by law into the Colonial ports, and upon the merchandise imported in them, no other duties or charges of any kind, should be levied than upon British vessels, including all vessels of the Colonies themselves, or upon like merchandise imported into the Colonial ports from any other port or place, including Great Britain and the Colonial ports themselves. And, reciprocally, that upon the vessels of Great Britain admitted by law into the ports of the United States, and upon the merchandise imported in them, no other duties or charges of any kind should be levied than upon vessels of the United States, including vessels of each and every one of the States, or upon the like merchandise imported into the United States from any other port or place whatever. The words last underscored were inserted only for the greater satisfaction of the British Plenipotentiaries, it being explained by me, and so understood by them, that it could carry no new meaning; there being no such thing under our system with foreign nations, as a vessel of any one of the States distinct from a vessel of the United States. It followed that the passage would have had the same meaning without these words. The second article provided, in fulfilment of the intentions of the first, that the trade should continue upon the footing on which it had been placed by the laws of the two countries, with the exception of the removal by Great Britain of the duties specified in schedule C, of the act of Parliament of the 24th of June, 1822, and those specified in the schedule B, of the act of the fifth of August of the same year, and of the removal, by the United States, of the foreign tonnage duty and additional impost, complained of by Great Britain. The article concluded with a mutual pledge for the removal of all discriminating duties on either side, of whatever kind they might be, from the desire which operated with the parties, of placing the trade in all respects upon a footing of perfect equality. Such was the nature of my proposals, for the more exact terms of which I beg to refer to the paper which contains them. The British Plenipotentiaries made immediate, and the most decided objections to the part of these proposals which went to the abolition of the duties in the two schedules indicated. They declared that under no circumstances could they accede to such a principle; and they proceeded to assail it under every form. The fundamental error of their reasoning, as always heretofore upon the same point, appeared to me to lie in considering their Colonial possessions as part of the entire British dominion at one time, yet treating them as separate countries at another. For her own purposes, Britain could look upon these Colonies as on one and the same country with herself. For the purposes of trade with foreign States, she felt herself at liberty to consider them as detached from herself and forming a new and distinct country, as moving, in short, within a commercial orbit It was to wholly of their own. this that her rule, resolved into its at last. true principles, came However such a rule might be met, and its application admitted, as between foreign States mutually possessing colonies, and therefore mutually able, in their commercial intercourse with each other, to act upon it, its application was manifestly unequal and incongruous towards the United States. Possessing no colonies themselves, the United States neither legislated nor acted upon a principle of subdividing their empire for any purpose of commercial advantage, or, above all, monopoly, with other nations, but held out indiscriminately to all, one integral and undivided system. In strict justice, it would, hence, not be unreasonable in them to expect that all nations, with which they entered into commercial stipulations, should look upon their colonies, if they had any, only in the light of an extension of the territories and jurisdiction of the parent State, since this was, in effect, the aspect which the United States presented throughout the whole extent of their territories and jurisdiction to all foreign nations. The productions of Massachusetts, for example, which entered into the articles of international traffic, were, as compared with those of Louisiana, scarcely less different in their nature than were those of Britain from those of Jamaica ; yet one commercial code spread itself over the whole of the United States; of which foreign nations, and Britain amongst them, had the benefit, whilst different commercial codes, and entangling commercial practices under them, were seen to exist on the part of Britain. This resulted from the mere fact, important it might be to Britain, but indifferent to the United States, of these codes and these practices being applicable to the Government of different portions of the British Empire; some of which fell under the denomination of her Home dominion, and some of her Colonial dominion. to It was to no effective purpose, however, that I enlarged upon, and endeavoured to enforce, by placing in other lights the foreThe British going distinctions. Plenipotentiaries continued combat my positions, and to insist upon their right to lay whatever duties they deemed expedient upon our productions going to their islands, in protection of the like articles exported to them from any part of their own dominion. They said that they would never part with this right, for which we offered them no equivalent concession. They likened our request for its surrender by an analogy, the force of which I could never see, to a request on the side of Great Britain, should she prefer such a request, to be admitted into a participation of our coasting trade. They alleged also, that, in laying these duties, they had aimed only at making them a necessary protection to their own subjects in their North American colonies; and that they were scarcely up to this point was shown by the fact which they also alleged, of their subjects in those colonies not having yet been able, since the trade was opened, to obtain a proportionate share of it. I had, more than once, occasion to remark, that it was not the right of either party to model its own laws as it thought proper, that we were discussing; it was the terms upon which it would be best to do so that we ought rather to be desirous of settling. Here were certain colonies belonging to Great Britain on the continent of North America. It happened that some of them were in the immediate neighbourhood of the United States. Their course of industry was the same, their productions the same. If the live stock and lumber from one of these colonies, from that of NewBrunswick for example, were allowed to be imported into Antigua or St. Christopher's, duty free, whilst similar articles from the State of Maine, bordering upon New Brunswick, laboured under a duty of ten per cent. on their importation into the same islands, was not, I asked, all just competition at an end? Still more was this the case, I remarked, if, after disposing of their cargoes, the vessel from New Brunswick could take in a return cargo, absolved from an export duty, and was, moreover, left at liberty to take advantage of circumstances by trading from colony to colony, whilst the vessel from Maine was obliged to depart in ballast, or, if she took in a cargo, do so subject to the export duty. How, too, under the weight of this latter duty, were the articles upon which it was charged to bear up in the markets of the United States against the competition of similar articles found in their markets, partly of their own produce, and partly derived from islands in the West Indies, other than those belonging to Grea tBritain? It was thus, that I endeavoured to establish the reasonableness of our complaints, and to recommend our proposals to adoption. I admitted the general right which every nation had to foster the industry of its own subjects, preferably to that of strangers, but controverted its justice or expediency, as applicable to this trade, a trade that was anomalous in many points, and to be judged of and regulated, not so much on any general theory, as under an impartial view of all the peculiarities that belong to it. As to the expression "from elsewhere," introduced into the act of Congress of the 1st March, 1823, I insisted upon the propriety of giving it a construction that would include the British Colonies themselves as well as foreign countries, the only construction that ever could satisfy the United States, because the only one that could ever be equitable. Without it a reciprocity in words might exist; but there would be none in fact. There was obviously no foreign' nation, except the United States, that supplied the British West Indies with the articles in which a traffic had been opened. To say, therefore, that they should be imported into the British islands, subject to no higher duties than were levied on articles of the same kind coming from any other foreign country, would be altogether unmeaning. The field of competition was exclusively in the North American Colonies of Britain. These, by their position and all their local peculiarities, were fairly to be considered as another country, in the estimate of this trade, though they were, it was true, in political subjection to Great Britain. Their being dependencies, altered not those physical and geographical characteristics in them, which made them the rivals in this intercourse, and the only rivals of the United States. The British Plenipotentiaries yielded to none of this reasoning. They admitted that there were many difficulties in the way of a satisfactory adjustment of the shipping question, and of this intercourse generally, between Great Britain and the United States. These difficulties were partly colonial, partly the result of their old navigation laws, and partly springing from the nature of the British North American trade, which bore so close an affinity to some portion of the trade of the United States. But they continued to declare their determination not to admit the productions of the United States into their islands, upon the same footing with the like productions from other colonies of their own: and they reiterated their allegations, that even, under the present duties on our productions, the trade was in our favour. They argued hence, that the amount of the duties, instead of being too high, seemed insufficient thus far, taken on a general scale, to balance the advantage of our proximity to the West Indies, and of the greater extent and productiveness of our soil. On this head they gave me details. They said that, by their latest accounts, full two-thirds of the flour and lumber sent to their islands from North America, were ascertained to have been of the produce of the United States, and that perhaps seven-eighths of this quantity were conveyed in vessels of the United States. On the return trade, also, they declared that our vessels had a share not much below the same proportion. To these statements, I could only reply, that my impressions were different. That it was true I was in possession of no returns subsequent to June, 1823, but, that up to that period, my information justified me in believing that the trade had not yielded a fair proportion of gain to our merchants. The British Plenipotentiaries dwelt emphatically upon the circumstance of our vessels taking away specie from their islands, in place of a return cargo in the produce of the islands, as indicative of the trade being against the islands, since it left upon their hands their rum and molasses, articles which they were chiefly anxious should find a market in the United States. If it were the export duty that produced this necessity in our vessels to take payment in money for their cargoes rather than in the produce of the islands, the Plenipotentiaries said that they could not repeal it, because it applied equally to British vessels. It was a duty of four and a half per cent. existing on the exportation of produce, not in all of the islands, but in some of them, viz: in Antigua, St. Christopher's, Montserat, Barbadoes, Nevis, and the Virgin Islands. In the latter, it was granted for the benefit of the crown, in 1774. In most or all of the others it had existed, for the same purpose, as far back as 1668. Bri tish vessels paid it, they said, when going from these islands, whether their destination was the mother country, or any foreign country. But I did not understand them to say that it was paid if they went only from colony to colony. To the objection of only a limited number of ports being open to our vessels, they said that they admitted them wherever custom houses were established; and that the privilege reserved to British vessels, of going from colony to colony, was only the privilege of letting them enjoy their own coasting trade. They seemed to forget that, by whatever name this privilege went, it was still one which operated against the competition of vessels of the United States. On the non-admission into their islands of articles that we desired to send, as, for example, salt fish, beef, pork--these, they said, were also excluded from the direct trade between Great Britain and the United States, including all other foreign countries. Here, too, they seemed to throw out of mind, that this very exclusion, in whatever principle it originated, still operated against the commerce of the United States: for, that a system of positive exclusion formed no part of the regular or permanent system of the United States, and was, therefore, one of which, as long as they dealt out a different measure of commercial benefit to other nations, they had good grounds to complain. I am saved the necessity of recapitulating, any further, the remarks of the British Plenipotentiaries upon our proposals, from their having furnished me with a summary of them in writing. This was not in the regular course of our proceedings, and the paper not being considered as an official one, was not annexed to any protocol, or referred to in any. It was merely given to me as an informal memorandum, in which light I was willing and glad to receive it, as it protects me from all risk of not doing justice in my report to their representations. It will be found. among the enclosures, marked W. After all that I have said, it may be almost superfluous to state, that this Government will decline abrogating the tonnage duty of four shillings and three pence sterling imposed upon our vessels, by the order in council, of July, 1823. Mr. Huskisson expressly brought this subject before the House of Commons, in the course of the last session of Paliament, with a view to give a full validity to that order, doubts having arisen how far it was justifiable by the provisions of the act of Parliament, of the preceding session, on which it was founded. By this act, a general power had been given to the King, in council, to impose countervailing duties on the cargoes of foreign vessels, but not upon their tonnage. It was under this act that the order of July, 1823, affecting the tonnage of our vessels, passed; and Mr. Huskisson obtained, at the last session, a new act for indemnifying all persons concerned in executing this order, which, though out of the words, was conceived to be within the objects of the first act. A copy of the last act is enclosed. The two acts taken together now give to the King and Council, a permanent power to meet other nations on the ground of reciprocity in duties, both as to vessels and cargoes. To this ground Prussia has acceded, by a treaty concluded with this Government in April last, a printed copy of which I enclose, that its terms may |