DESPATCHES, REPORTS, CORRESPONDENCE, ETC. 163 



Bermuda, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, embracing articles of West 

 India produce, or of the produce of the United States, destined for 

 the West Indies, other than were admitted to be imported or exported 

 in a direct manner? 



As the British Government would retain the power of laying 

 duties on the produce of the United States imported into the West 

 Indies, and would not lay any on similar articles imported therein 

 from any part of the British dominions, ought we to assent, without 

 any condition or exception, to the clause annexed to the first article 

 formerly proposed by that Government, and by which no higher 

 duties should be laid, respectively, on the produce of either country, 

 than on similar articles imported from any other foreign country? 



We thought it safer to err on our own side of the question, and to 

 ask for more than perhaps under all circumstances we expected to 

 obtain, rather than to limit our demands to less than might be in- 

 tended by our Government. The. articles which we proposed at the 

 third conference were drawn with that view; and the British pleni- 

 potentiaries immediately stated that they were inadmissible, and 

 amounted to a much greater departure from the colonial policy of 

 Great Britain than she was prepared to allow. They did not enter 

 into any abstract defence of that policy, but they strongly urged the 

 impossibility of breaking down, at once, a system still favoured by 

 public opinion, and supported by various interests which could not 

 be disregarded. The fish and lumber of the northern colonies, the 

 salted provisions, and even the flour of Ireland, the shipping inter- 

 ests, and that of non-residing West India planters, were all alluded 

 to. Having once admitted the basis of perfect reciprocity with 

 respect to the direct intercourse, they thought that the United States 

 ought, for the present, to be satisfied with an arrangement which 

 would admit a considerable number of articles to be carried directly ; 

 that they should not insist on the exclusion, in the intercourse with 

 Halifax, St. John's, and Bermuda, of those articles which might not 

 be included in the list of those admitted in the direct inter- 

 96 course with the West Indies; and that we ought not to object 

 to the natural right of Great Britain to lay protecting duties 

 in favour of the produce of her own possessions. 



We admitted that the last principle, as an abstract proposition, 

 was unexceptionable, but observed, that the practical effect of the 

 condition on which they insisted was altogether partial. Since they 

 persevered in making a distinction between the intercourse with Eng- 

 land and that with her colonies, and even between that with her 

 northern American colonies and that with the West Indies, the 

 United States must, in a commercial view, consider them as so many 

 distinct countries. As no other foreign country could supply the 

 West Indies with the articles which were the produce of the United 

 States, a condition which would prevent Great Britain from laying 

 higher duties on that produce than on similar articles the produce 

 of other foreign countries, was nugatory, and to us perfectly useless. 

 There was, in that respect, no competition but with the produce of 

 the British possessions. We found in that condition, no compensa- 

 tion for the restriction which it would impose on the United States 

 to lay no higher duties on the colonial produce of the British posses- 

 sions than on that of other countries. The propriety of limiting the 

 number of articles to be carried directly, would in a great measure 



