deration of the permission to import their Produce into the British Colonies, and to export therefrom produce of those Colonies to any Foreign Country, except Great Britain, those Powers should at once extend to the Commerce and Navigation of the United Kingdom, and its Possessions abroad, the full measure of all Commercial privileges which they may have granted to the most favoured Nation. It is impossible not to see that this discrimination, made by the Act of Parliament between different Foreign Powers, operates exclusively upon The United States. All the Maritime States have Colonies, and therefore will be let into the trade with the British Colonies upon the less onerous conditions. The United States are the only Power, not having Colonies, which trades, or is ever likely to trade, in any extent with British Colonies. And, if they alone had been named in the second class of Powers described in the Act, the application of its more burdensome conditions would not, in that case, have been more exclusively confined to them. The trade of The United States will bear an advantageous comparison with the trade of any of the Colonial Powers, either in its amount, or the value or variety of the articles which it comprehends, is greatly superior to that of most of them, and justly entitles us to demand from Great Britain as favourable terms as those which are extended to any of them. It is true that the Act holds out the idea of some mitigation of these conditions in the authority confided to the King. But on what considerations His Britannick Majesty might be induced, by His Order in Council, to exercise the dispensing power vested in him, is not stated in the Act itself, nor have they been disclosed by any Order in Council, or in any other manner which has come to our knowledge. The very investment of such a power, I repeat, implied friendly explanations and discussions, and consequently the means of negotiation which the British Government now rejects as altogether inadmissible. Being, therefore, unable to ascertain the undivulged considerations which might have led to some relaxation or variation of the conditions of the Act of Parliament, we are confined to an examination of those specifick conditions themselves.

They require that The United States, to entitle themselves to the permission of importation and exportation which is granted by the British Law of Navigation, should place the Commerce and Navigation of the United Kingdom, and of its Possessions abroad, upon the footing of the most favoured Nation. The first observation occurring is, that, at the very moment when the British Government is putting forth the new principle that the regulation of the trade of the Parent Country and of its Colonies, depends upon two rules, essentially dif ferent, the one admitting, and the other excluding all consultation with Foreign States; this Act confounds them together, and requires not merely that we should place the British Colonies upon the footing of the most favoured Colonies, but that, to entitle us to enjoy the pri

vileges of an intercourse with those Colonies, we must comply with the requirement of placing the Navigation and Commerce, both of the Parent Country and all its Possessions abroad, on the footing of the most favoured Nation.

The first difficulty which is encountered, in ascertaining the precise nature and extent of the conditions prescribed by the Act of Parliament, is, that it furnishes no definition of the terms, "the most favoured Nation," which it employs. According to one interpretation of those terms, they import the gratuitous concession of commercial privileges. According to another, they imply the Nation which enjoys the greatest amount of commercial privilege, whether granted with or without equivalents.

That the first was not the sense in which the British Government intended to use those terms we conjectured; because if it were, nothing remained to be done by the American Government to bring itself within the conditions of the Act of Parliament, and we apprehended that the British Government required some positive act. Great Britain, in that sense of the terms, is, in respect to the Commerce and Navigation both of the Parent Country and its Possessions abroad, on the footing of the most favoured Nation. Whatever commercial privileges are granted by The United States to any Foreign Nation, by Act of Congress, or by Treaties, are founded upon equivalents. Holding out the principle of fair reciprocity to all Nations, we neither ask, nor profess to bestow, commercial boons. Thus in respect to Alien or discriminating duties, we have not abolished them in behalf of any Nation which has not professed to abolish them as to us. If they are now levied upon British Vessels, coming to The United States from British Colonies, countervailing duties are now also levied upon American Vessels entering British Colonies, and have been constantly, as Mr. Canning declares, from 1823. If the amount of American tonnage admitted to entry in British Colonial Ports, and of British tonnage entering American Ports from British Colonies, were exactly equal, the collection of duties on one side would neutralize the collection on the other. But, as there is much more American than British tonnage employed in the Colonial trade, we pay a greater amount of those duties than Great Britain. And, consequently, if there were cause of complaint on either side, on account of their existence, it would be with us. It could not, therefore, have been in the first, but must have been in the second meaning of the terms, that they are employed in the Act of Parliament.

Great Britain is understood, then, to have demanded that The United Kingdom and its Possessions abroad, should be allowed to enjoy, in the Ports of The United States, the greatest extent of commercial privileges which we have granted, no matter upon what ample equivalent, to any Foreign Nation whatever. In order to ascertain the

latitude of concession thus required, it is necessary to glance, and it shall be done as rapidly as possible, at the state of our commercial relations with other Foreign Powers.

By the general Law of Navigation (see 6th Vol. of the Laws of The United States, page 180,) it is enacted, that, after the 30th day of September, 1818, "no goods, wares, or merchandize, shall be imported into The United States from any Foreign Port or Place, except in Vessels of The United States, or in such Foreign Vessels as truly and wholly belong to the Citizens or Subjects of that Country, of which the goods are the growth, production or manufacture, or from which such goods, wares, or merchandize, can only be, or most usually are, first shipped for transportation: Provided, nevertheless, that this Regulation shall not extend to the Vessels of any Foreign Nation which has not adopted, and which shall not adopt, a similar Regulation."

Great Britain had, long prior to the passage of that Act, adopted, and continues to enforce, the restriction on which it is founded; whilst almost all other Nations have abstained from incorporating it in their Navigation Codes. A Vessel, therefore, of The United States on entering a British Port, being limited by British Law to the introduction of goods the produce of The United States, a British Vessel on entering their Ports, is limited to the introduction of goods being of British produce; whilst the Vessels of all other Nations, which have not adopted the restrictive regulation, are allowed, on entering a Port of The United States, to introduce any Foreign produce whatever, by paying the Alien and discriminating duties, from which Vessels of The United States are exempted.

By particular arrangements with various Powers, some by Treaty, and others by separate but reciprocal Acts of the Governments of The United States and those Powers, the Alien duties of The United States are abolished as to them, and their Vessels, and those of The United States are allowed the reciprocal liberty of importation and exportation at the same rate of duty upon both Ship and Cargo.

Thus, by the Act of Congress of January, 1824," so much of the several Acts imposing duties on the tonnage of Vessels in the Ports of The United States, as imposes a discriminating duty between Foreign Vessels and Vessels of The United States, is hereby suspended so far as respects Vessels truly and wholly belonging to Subjects or Citizens of the Kingdom of The Netherlands, of Prussia, of the Imperial Hanseatick Cities of Hamburgh, Lubeck, and Bremen, of the Dukedom of Oldenburgh, of the Kingdom of Norway, of the Kingdom of Sardinia, and of the Empire of Russia." And it enacts a like suspension of the discriminating duties on the cargo of any of the Vessels of those several Countries.

But it further enacts, that the suspension of those duties shall "continue in behalf of each of the above-mentioned Nations, on condi

tion that, and so long as, the Vessels of The United States, and truly and wholly belonging to the Citizens thereof, and all goods and merchandize of the produce and manufacture thereof, laden therein, and imported into any of the said Nations in Europe, respectively, shall be exempted from all and every discriminating duty of impost or tonnage, direct or indirect, whatsoever, other or higher than is levied upon the Vessels and merchandize therein imported, belonging to the Subjects or Citizens of each of the said Nations respectively.”

Thus, therefore, to comply with the condition of the Act of Parliament, we must, 1st. have allowed British Vessels to import into The United States the produce of any Foreign Country whatever, upon the payment of the Alien Duties, although Vessels of The United States are and should have remained prohibited to import into British Ports like produce upon any terms whatever. And 2dly, we must have abolished or suspended our discriminating duties, placing Great Britain upon the footing of the most favoured Nation, in whose behalf we had abolished or suspended them, although it now appears, from the averment of Mr. Canning, that duties of at least an equal amount have been, since the adoption of the Order in Council, in the Year 1823, and now are, levied upon American Vessels and their Cargoes in British Colonial Ports.

So stood our Law, and such must have been our compliance with the conditions of the Act of Parliament at the time of its passage. But we suppose it to have been the understanding of the British Government, that if, subsequent to that period, we should grant to any Foreign Nation still greater privileges than those above described, by Treaty or otherwise, in consideration of equivalents or not, such more extensive privileges must have immediately accrued to The United Kingdom and its Possessions abroad, upon the rule of the most favoured Nation, or we must have subjected ourselves to the forfeiture of the Colonial Trade, denounced by the Act of Parliament.

Now, subsequently to the date of that Act, to wit, on the 6th December last, we concluded a Treaty with the Republick of the Federation of the Centre of America, which, having been afterwards ratified by both Parties, is now in full operation. By this Treaty it is stipulated, that whatever can be exported from, or imported into either Country, in its own Vessels, to or from any Foreign place whatever, may, in like manner, be exported or imported in the Vessels of the other Country, the Vessel and the Cargo paying in both cases the same and no higher duties, and consequently neither paying the Alien Duties. If we had entitled ourselves, by the fulfilment of the required conditions, to an Intercourse with the British Colonies, we would now be obliged, in order to retain the right to that intercourse, to allow British Vessels, both of the Parent Country and its Possessions abroad, a liberty of exportation and importation co-extensive with that of the

Vessels of The United States, although the interdict of the British Law of Navigation should remain in full operation on the Vessels of The United States.

If we are mistaken in the extent of the concessions required by the British Government, to place the United Kingdom and its Possessions abroad, on the footing of the most favoured Nation, the best and most friendly mode of correcting our error would have been, to have accompanied an official communication of the Act of Parliament with a full and frank explanation of those conditions, the performance of which, on our part, would have satisfied that Government. By withholding all explanation, if the Congress of The United States had legislated on that subject at its last Session, it must have acted either; 1st. upon the exposition of the conditions of the Act of Parliament now given; or, 2dly. upon the views of the British Government, as disclosed in the Negotiations of 1824. It could not have conformed to the conditions of the Act of Parliament, as we understand them, without a manifest sacrifice of the interests of the People of The United States, and an abandonment of those principles of reciprocity for which they have ever contended in all their Negotiations with Foreign Powers. It now appears that it would have been unavailing if Congress had legislated in compliance with the views of the British Government, as presented in the Negotiations of 1824. According to those views, that Government was then willing that the trade between the Colonies and The United States should continue restricted, as it then was, by the Laws of the two Countries, to the direct intercourse; that is to say, that a British Vessel clearing from The United States for a Colonial Port, should be bound to land its Cargo in that Port; and an American Vessel clearing from the Colonies for The United States, should be bound to land its Cargo in them. But without any intimation to us, through the regular diplomatic channels, of an alteration in her views, Great Britain has now changed them, and on the 11th September, 1826, for the first time announces her determination not "to consent to enter into any renewed Negotiation upon the Intercourse between The United States and the British Colonies, so long as the pretension (the above restriction as to the direct Intercourse) recorded in the Act of 1823, and there applied to British Colonies alone, remains part of the Law of The United States." And we are also given to understand, "that the British Government further owes it to the spirit of frankness which it wishes to cultivate in all its relations with The United States, to declare, that, after having been compelled to apply to any Country, the interdict prescribed by the Act of 1825, the British Government cannot hold itself bound to remove that interdict, as a matter of course, whenever it may happen to suit the convenience of the Foreign Government to reconsider the measures by which the application of that interdict was occasioned." The pretension referred to, is the exact