tions and limitations, under which they were content to enjoy it; but that privilege Great Britain still withheld from all the Powers of Europe.

The concession to The United States was, in effect, if not in words, exclusive; for the new Countries of America (not then recognized by His Majesty), had no commerce or navigation which could interfere with those of The United States.

It cannot, however, be supposed, it is not affirmed by Mr. Gallatin, that, by granting this privilege, thus, in effect exclusively, to The United States, in the first instance, Great Britain precluded herself from extending it to other Nations, whenever the course of events should create a favourable occasion for doing so. Events which intervened between

1822 and 1825 created such an occasion.

As little can it be supposed that, because Great Britain submitted, at a moment of necessity, to terms which, though not unjust, were inconvenient to her, she bound herself to continue to submit to them when that necessity should have passed away.

Scarcity may justify the demand of a high price, and monopoly may give the power of exacting it; but there is surely no understood compact between the buyer and the seller, that the former shall not endeavour to make himself independent of the latter by opening the market to general competition.

These obvious and simple considerations led to the Act of Parliament of 1825.

Our right either to open the Ports of our Colonies, or to keep them closed, as might suit our own convenience,-our right to grant the indulgence of a trade with those Colonies to Foreign Powers, wholly or partially, unconditionally or conditionally, as we might think proper, and, if conditionally, on what conditions we pleased, was clear. We were not bound by any engagement to continue a monopoly of such indulgence to one Foreign Power against others. We had for three years felt the inconvenience of such monopoly. We naturally sought, therefore, in our new measure, to avoid the recurrence of the like inconvenience, by making our indulgence general to all Nations; and, in order to keep the regulation of that indulgence in our own hands, we granted it by spontaneous legislation, and not by positive Treaty.

The question is now, therefore, no longer, what it was in 1820 or 1822, a question between Great Britain and The United States of America; it is a question between Great Britain and all the Nations of the Old and the New World; to all of whom Great Britain has tendered access to her Colonies, on conditions which many of them have practically accepted, and more, perhaps, are ready to accept..

Having thus placed, as he hopes, in a clear light, the general principles of Colonial Trade, and the principles and considerations upon which Great Britain has acted, in respect to her own West India Colo

nies, the undersigned now proceeds to consider the details of Mr. Gallatin's Note of the 26th of August.

It has been already said, that, in the Year 1822, we opened, by an Act of Parliament, a Trade with our West India Colonies to American Ships, under certain limitations and conditions.

The United States were at full liberty to accept or to decline those

terms.

In accepting them, The United States imposed at the same time onerous charges and restrictions upon all British Vessels which might trade between the British West India Colonies and The United States. One of these charges is an Alien Duty both upon the Ship and upon her Cargo.

After ineffectual endeavours, on our part, to obtain the removal of this duty, we were compelled to lay a countervailing duty to the same amount, upon American Ships in the Colonial Ports.

Mr. Gallatin states, that, by the imposition of this countervailing duty, "British and American Vessels, employed in the intercourse between the British Colonies and The United States, are placed on a footing of the most perfect equality." And further, that "there is not, if he is rightly informed, a single act of the Government of The United States which can, in the view taken of the subject by that of His Majesty, be considered as not fulfilling the condition contemplated by the Act of Parliament of the 5th of July 1825, as not placing the Commerce and Navigation of Great Britain, and of her possessions Abroad, upon the footing of the most favoured Nation, excepting only the continuance of the discriminating tonnage duty of 94 cents per ton on British Vessels, and of the addition of 10 per cent. on the ordinary duty charged on goods imported in British Vessels entering the Ports of The United States from the British Colonies."

The arguments drawn by Mr. Gallatin from these statements, are three first, that the duty on the side of The United States, and the countervailing duty on the side of Great Britain, being equal, British Ships trading between the Colonies and The United States are as much favoured as American Ships in the same trade; secondly, that inasmuch as, with the exception of the discriminating duties in America, Great Britain is, in all other respects, treated as "the most favoured Nation," there is no just cause for the exercise, on the part of Great Britain, of the power of interdiction provided by the Act of 1825; and, thirdly, that, having in our hands two remedies for one and the same grievance, we ought, at all events, to have contented ourselves with applying either, but not both, by the same Order in Council.

To begin with the last of these three points, viz.-the assumption that," having in our hands two remedies for one grievance, we ought to have been contented with applying either, but not both, by the saine Order in Council."

The only measure which is new in the Order in Council is, the interdiction of the Trade between the British West India Colonies and The United States, after a specified period. The Duties on American Shipping, mentioned in that Order, are not new: they were imposed by an Order in Council in 1823, and have been constantly levied since that time. They are again mentioned in the present Order in Council, only for the direction of the British Custom House Officers in the West Indies, who, if those duties had not been mentioned as still existing might have imagined them to be superseded.

The history of these Duties is simply this:-On the 1st of March 1823, a Law was passed by The United States, which directs an Alien Duty to be levied upon British Ships and Cargoes coming from the British West India Colonies, "until proof shail be given, to the satisfaction of the President of The United States, that no other or higher duties of tonnage or impost, and no other charges of any kind, are exacted in the British Colonial Ports, upon the Vessels of The United States, and upon any Goods, Wures, or Merchandize therein imported from The United States, than upon British Vessels entering the same Ports, and upon the like Goods, Wares, and Merchandize imported in such Vessels from elsewhere."

The British Government at first misapprehended the import of the term "from elsewhere," conceiving it to apply to Foreign Countries alone, and not to the British Possessions in North America; nor was it till after the interchange of several Official Notes between the British Envoy at Washington and the American Secretary of State, that the British Government was made to comprehend (or rather was brought to believe) the full extent of the concession required by the Act of Congress, namely, that the produce of The United States, when imported from The United States into the British West India Colonies, should be placed on an equal footing with the like produce of the Mother Country herself and her other Dependencies.

When such was, at length, ascertained to be the true construction of the American Act of Congress of 1823, those countervailing Duties were imposed on the Trade of The United States by the British Government, which are now merely continued, till the 1st of December next, in the West Indies, and, indefinitely, in the Ports of British North America.

It is to be observed, that, by the Act of Parliament of 1822, (3 Geo. IV. cap. 44,) the British Government was enabled to interdict all intercourse between The United States and the British West India Colonies, under any such circumstances as those which had actually arisen in The United States.

The milder measure of a retaliatory Duty was preferred for two reasons; first, we were convinced that a claim so extraordinary as that put forward by the interpretation given to the Act of Congress of 1823,

would not be persevered in after explanation: and secondly, we had an assurance that a full opportunity of that explanation would arise in the course of the Negotiation which was then about to be opened between the Two Governments, on this, among other points, in which their respective interests were concerned.

That Negotiation took place in London, in the Spring of 1824. On the part of the British Government, an offer was made to arrange this matter, upon terms highly favourable to The United States, but the American Plenipotentiary intrenched himself within the letter of the American Law, and declared any proposal inadmissible, which was not accompanied with the concession required by the final interpretation of that Law.

Things remaining in this state, and the British proposition having lain unnoticed for nine months before the American Government, the Act of Parliament of July 1825 was passed.

The American Legislature had cognizance of that Act from the commencement of its last Session. It had also cognizance of the specifick proposals offered by the British Government in 1824. Further, there was brought under its consideration, by one of its members, a Resolution for repealing the discriminating Duties. The Session, however, ended, without the enactment of any Law for repealing or relaxing the restrictions of the Act of Congress of 1823, and with the rejection, after debate, of the Resolution for the repeal of the discriminating Duties.

To come next to Mr. Gallatin's allegation--that the discriminating Duties are our only cause of complaint; that, in other respects, Great Britain is placed by The United States on the footing of the most favoured Nation, in her intercourse between her West India Colonies and The United States.

Mr. Gallatin, in making this averment, appears to overlook another enactment, contained in the same Act of Congress which imposed the discriminating Duties: an enactment hardly less injurious to the Commerce and Navigation of Great Britain. That enactment, in substance, provides, that no British ship entering an American Port from the United Kingdom, or from any other British Possession, except directly from the West India Colonies, shall be allowed to clear out from any Port of The United States for any of those Colonies.

If it is intended to be maintained, that, because the British Act of 1822 permits only a direct trade between our Colonies and The United States in American Ships, the prohibition of a trade through The United States, between the Mother Country and her Colonies, is, therefore, fair reciprocity; that position resolves itself, in effect, into the first of the three arguments into which Mr. Gallatin's statement has been divided, and may be comprehended in the same answer. It furnishes a striking illustration of the general misconception which has already

been noticed as pervading Mr. Gallatin's Note, in respect to the character of Colonial Trade.

To allow a Foreign ship to enter Colonial Ports at all, and upon any terms, is a boon; to withhold from the ship of a country having Colonies, trading from the Mother Country to a Foreign State, under a regular Treaty between the two Countries, the right of clearing for another Port belonging to that Mother Country in another part of the world, is an injury.

That right has been denied to Great Britain by The United States; not perhaps in contradiction to the letter, but undoubtedly in deviation from the spirit, of the Treaty of 1815. It is a right which existed, and was enjoyed before the Treaty of 1815 was framed; at a period, that is, when no claim to any Trade with our Colonies had been even whispered by The United States; and it could not, therefore, be, by any just reasoning, connected with that Trade, or made dependent upon it. It is a right which Friendly Nations, trafficking with one another, are so much in the habit of allowing to each other, that it is exercised as a matter of course, unless specifically withholden. The Colonial Trade, on the contrary, by the practice of all Nations having Colonies, is a Trade interdicted, as a matter of course, unless specifically granted.

It must not be forgotten, that this enactment, founded professedly on the limitations of the British Act of Parliament of 1822, is continued 14 months after the passing of the British Act of 1825, by which the limitations of 1822 were done away. Since the 5th of January 1826, an American ship trading to a British West India Colony may clear out from thence to any part of the world, the United Kingdom and its Dependencies alone excepted. But the British ship in the American Port still remains subject to all the restrictions of the American Law of 1823, prohibiting a trade through The United States between the Mother Country and her West India Colonies.

Mr. Gallatin, in his Note of the 26th of August, states, that "it is well known that the delay" in renewing a negotiation upon the subject of Colonial Intercourse, on principles of mutual accommodation, " was due to causes not under the controul of The United States; principally to the state of health of Mr. King."

Upon this point the Undersigned has only to observe, that no intimation that Mr. King had received instructions, which would enable him to resume this Negotiation, was ever before communicated to the British Government. On the contrary, the only communication at all relating to this matter, which has reached him in any authentick shape, was in a Despatch from Mr. Vaughan, dated the 22d of March last, wherein that Minister states, that " Mr. Clay had informed him that he should not be able to furnish Mr. King with his Instructions before the end of the month of May, to enable him to recommence the Negotiation."