40 READJUSTMENT AFTER WAR 



nation protected its own merchants and ship 

 ping interests by excluding foreigners from its 

 jurisdiction save under heavy burdens. To the 

 Americans it seemed something like a violation 

 of natural justice that they should be forbidden 

 to sell a cargo of goods in Halifax or Jamaica; 

 yet such was British law. It was hard to ques 

 tion the right of a government to exclude for 

 eigners from its ports; but the desperate eager 

 ness of the Americans for certain kinds of trade 

 led them at times to take the ground that free 

 dom of commercial intercourse was so pro 

 foundly an interest of all mankind as fairly to 

 be within the domain of natural law. Such a 

 trend of argument could, of course, have no 

 practical effect in any concrete case; the Brit 

 ish, entrenched in commanding commercial sites 

 all over the globe, could and did merely 

 inquire what the Americans could offer for the 

 privileges they sought. Bargaining of the kind 

 thus suggested was a very unsatisfactory proc 

 ess where there was such disparity between 

 the two parties in actual possessions. It was 

 like the freedom of contract in a later day that 

 was alleged to be a sufficient principle on which 

 to base the relations of wage-earner and wage- 

 payer. 



