138 COBRESPONDENOE, ETC., 



that that Government would willingly withdraw the privileges of 

 trading with its Colonies, which it has granted to other Nations, 

 if that could conveniently be done. 



Such is the present state of our Commercial Relations with the 

 British Colonies ; and such the steps by which we have arrived at it. 



In reviewing the events which have preceded, and more or less 

 contributed to, a result so much to be regretted, there will be found 

 three grounds upon which we are most assailable; 1st, in our too 

 long and too tenaciously resisting the right of Great Britain to 

 impose protecting duties in her Colonies; 2dly, in not relieving her 

 Vessels from the restriction of returning direct from The United 

 States to the Colonies, after permission had been given by Great 

 Britain to pur Vessels to clear out from the Colonies to any other 

 than a British Port ; and 3dly, in omitting to accept the terms offered 

 by the Act of Parliament of July 1825, after the subject had been 

 brought before Congress, and deliberately acted upon by our Govern- 

 ment. It is, without doubt, to the combined operation of these 

 causes, that we are to attribute the British interdict. You will 

 therefore see the propriety of possessing yourself fully of all the 

 explanatory and mitigating circumstances connected with them, that 

 you may be enabled to obviate, as far as practicable, the unfavourable 

 impression which they have produced. 



The trade, though not wholly suppressed, is altogether changed 

 in its character. Instead of being direct, active, and profitable, as 

 it once was, it is circuitous, burthensome, and comparatively profit- 

 less. The importation of the produce of the British West India 

 Colonies into The United States, may be said to have substantially 

 ceased. It is wholly prohibited in British Vessels, and allowed only 

 direct from the producing Colony. By the Orders in Council, the 

 admission of American Vessels is prohibited. Consequently, what- 

 ever of British West India produce is brought into this Country 

 (with the exception of what has been recently allowed to be imported 

 from the Bahama Islands, and the Island of Anguilla) must either 

 be brought by the Vessels of other Nations, which are permitted, 

 under the Act of Parliament of July, 1825, to clear from the Colonies 

 for any other Ports, except in Great Britain and her Possessions, or 

 it must be imported as the growth or produce of other Colonies, to 

 which the Vessels of The United States are admitted, and thus intro- 

 duced in evasion of our Law. 



The export trade has been more considerable, though greatly and 

 injuriously reduced. The decrees of nature, by which the British 

 West Indies are made dependent on The United States for a great 

 portion of their necessary supplies, though erroneously resisted, have 

 not been altogether frustrated by the retaliatory and improvident 

 Legislation of the 2 Countries. Large quantities of American pro- 

 ductions still find their way to the Colonies. The uncertainty as to 

 how much of our produce is used in the Ports to which the exporta- 

 tions are nominally made, renders it impossible to speak with ac- 

 curacy as to the amount actually consumed in the British West India 

 Colonies since the Ports were closed. In the opinion of intelligent 

 merchants, it is about half as much as immediately before the inter- 

 dict. It is carried in American Vessels to the Islands of St. Thomas 

 and St. Bartholomew on the one hand, and to the open Ports in the 



