POLITICAL AND COMMERCIAL 11 



the United States became an independent 

 power, she was still hampered by the Eng- 

 lish Navigation Act, and although Jay's 

 treaty in 1794 obtained for her the right of 

 direct trade with the West Indies, it was 

 coupled with such conditions that she 

 rejected it. The British government, then, 

 by executive order continued the trade of 

 the West Indies with the United States 

 under the same conditions as prevailed in 

 colonial days. 



This question of a direct or broken 1 voy- 

 age was of the greatest importance and was 

 afterward one of the causes of the embargo 

 of 1807 and the War of 1812. To repeat, 

 under English executive permission an 

 American vessel of seventy tons burden, 

 or under French law an American vessel of 

 sixty tons burden might carry to the Eng- 



1 The term "broken voyage" appears frequently in the 

 commercial history of this period, and means, as the name 

 implies, the interposition of a third port between the place 

 from which the vessel is cleared and the port to which she 

 is really bound. 



