140 CORRESPONDENCE, ETC., 



she allows to the rest of the commercial world. The United States 

 do not controvert her right to monopolize the trade with her Col- 

 onies ; and if the same interdict which excludes them from her Colo- 

 nial Ports was extended to others, they would not complain. But 

 the British Government cannot be insensible to the tendency which 

 a discrimination of the character referred to must unavoidably have, 

 to alienate those liberal and friendly feelings now entertained to- 

 wards her by our People, and M'hich it should be the pleasure, as it 

 is the duty, of both Governments, to cherish and perpetuate. 



If the omission of this Government to accept of the terms pro- 

 posed when heretofore offered, be urged as an objection to their 

 adoption now, it will be your duty to make the British Government 

 sensible of the injustice and inexpediency of such a course. 



The opportunities which you have derived from a participation in 

 our Public Councils, as well as other sources of information, will 

 enable you to speak with confidence (as far as you may deem it 

 proper and useful so to do) of the respective parts taken by those 

 to whom the administration of this Government is now committed, in 

 relation to the course heretofore pursued upon the subject of the 

 Colonial trade. Their views upon that point have been submitted 

 to the People of The United States; and the counsels by which your 

 conduct is now directed are the result of the judgment expressed by 

 the only earthly tribunal to which the late Administration was 

 amenable for its acts. It should be sufficient that the claims set up 

 by them, and which caused the interruption of the trade in question, 

 have been explicitly abandoned by those who first asserted them, and 

 are not revived by their successors. If Great Britain deems it ad- 

 verse to her interests to allow us to participate in the trade with her 

 Colonies, and finds nothing in the extension of it to others to induce 

 her to apply the same rule to us, she will, we hope, be sensible of the 

 propriety of placing her refusal on those grounds. To set up the 

 acts of the late Administration as the cause of forfeiture of privileges 

 which would otherwise be extended to the People of The United 

 States, would, under existing circumstances, be unjust in itself, and 

 could not fail to excite their deepest sensibility. The tone of feeling 

 which a course so unwise and untenabje is calculated to produce would 

 doubtless be greatly aggravated by the consciousness that Great 

 Britain has, by Order in Council, opened her Colonial Ports to Rus- 

 sia and France, notwithstanding a similar omission on their part to 

 accept the terms offered by the Act of July, 1825. 



You cannot press this view of the subject too earnestly upon the 

 consideration of the British Ministry. It has bearings and relations 

 that reach beyond the immediate question under discussion. 



Should the amount of our protecting duties upon the productions 

 of her Colonies, or upon the manufactures of the Mother Country, 

 be referred to, in connexion with this matter, you will be at no loss 

 for the reply. The duties upon our agricultural productions when 

 imported into Great Britain, are beyond comparison greater than 

 those imposed by The United States on the productions or manufac- 

 tures of Great Britain or her Colonies; and the denial of her right 

 to impose duties on articles the production of The United States, 

 when imported into the Colonies, in order to protect those of the 

 Colonies themselves, or of the Mother Country, was a leading and 



