74 Kenneth S. Latoiirette, 



chiefly because of its effect upon the East India Company. The 

 importation of these goods began shortly after the War of 1812, 

 possibly in 1818.^"' An absence of discriminating port charges 

 and duties, except a small one of two per cent in London/'"* the 

 fact that the American merchant while charging the same price 

 in China bought in England a quality of goods slightly inferior 

 to those of the East India Company, and the exclusion of all 

 English free traders from the market gave a rapid growth to 

 the trade. This was very disquieting for the English. They 

 had long watched American trade with China with growing 

 uneasiness and at its very beginning Phineas Bond and the other 

 British agents in the United States had kept the ministry 

 informed of its progress. At first the attitude of English 

 observers was one of security or indifference. Lord Sheffield, 

 in his "Observations on the Commerce of the American States," 

 published first in 1783, entirely ignored the possibility of a direct 

 trade with China, and a London paper of March 16, 1785, said 

 that the Americans had "given up all thought of China 

 trade. "^'''' By 1813, however, English opponents of the East 

 India Company were beginning to point to the rapid growth of 

 the American-Canton commerce, to contrast it with the slow 

 increase of the British trade under the monopoly, and to use it 

 as an argument for making the English commerce with Canton 

 free.^^"* In 1819, Assey pointed out in a pamphlet "the insecurity 

 of the present trade from Great Britain and British India to 

 China if timely measures of precaution be not taken to meet the 

 progress of the Americans in China."" ^ So strong was the 

 outcry on this score by the opponents of the monopoly"- that a 



^"' Charles Everett says that he was the first to ship English manu- 

 factures in this way, and that he began in 1818. Ibid., Papers, 1830, 6: 361. 



^"' Testimony of Joshua Bates, Ibid., 6 : 365-380. Lindsey, History of 

 Merchant Shipping and Ancient Commerce. London, 1876, pp. 105, 106. 



"''Hill, Trade and Commerce of Boston, p. 81. 



"" "Additional Considerations upon the China Trade," written in 1813, 

 in defense of the East India Company, tries to answer this argument. 

 Staunton, Notices Relating to China, p. 178. 



"' Charles Assey, on the Trade to China and the Indian Archipelago, 

 etc., in the Pamphleteer, Vol. 4, London, 1819, p. 516. 



"^Staunton, Notices Relating to China, p. 299, publishing part of a letter 



