COMMERCIAL AGREEMENT OF 1830. 145 



portion of the capital of his Fellow-citizens as may be awaiting the 

 decision of this question, but also by the higher motive of speedily 

 terminating a state of things daily becoming more prejudicial to the 

 friendly relations of the two Countries. 



Disclaiming, on the part of The United States, in reply to certain 

 observations of your Lordship, all hostility to this Country, in their 

 system of protecting Duties, and disconnecting that system from any 

 arrangement of this particular question, I endeavored to lay this sub- 

 ject before His Majesty's Ministers, divested of all considerations but 

 such as peculiarly relate to this branch of the commerce between the 

 two Nations. 



Conceiving that experience had already proved the existing Colo- 

 nial Regulations to be injurious to the interests of both Countries, 

 the President was induced to hope, that true policy alone would dis- 

 pose His Majesty's Government to change them. He could perceive 

 no good reason why Great Britain should now refuse her assent to 

 the terms of arrangement which she herself had, heretofore, volun- 

 tarily proposed; and, as the Order in Council of July, 1826, did not 

 embrace Russia and Sweden, though both were within the scope of the 

 Act of 1825, and as it had been subsequently rescinded as to Spain, 

 without equivalent, he was unwilling to suppose that any unfriendly 

 motive could induce a peculiar and permanent exclusion of The 

 United States from the participation in a trade thus conceded to the 

 rest of the World. 



In fact, it appeared that a material alteration had taken place in 

 the Colonial System, and in the relations between the two Countries; 

 produced by the recent relaxation of the Order in Council in favour 

 of Spain, which left The United States the sole excluded Power ; and 

 by the injurious operation of the existing Regulations upon the in- 

 terests of Great Britain. It was not unreasonable, therefore, to sup- 

 pose, that the Negotiation might be advantageously resumed; that 

 the British Government might be induced to rescind, entirely, their 

 Order in Council of 1826, and that a satisfactory arrangement might 

 immediately be made by the reciprocal Acts of both Governments. 



In the course of my Negotiations, however, I have met with diffi- 

 culties much greater than had been anticipated. There were objec- 

 tions opposed to any arrangement. Among them were the measures 

 of The United States, restricting the British Colonial Commerce, 

 subsequently to their failure to accept the terms offered by the Act 

 of Parliament of 1825 ; and the Claims to protection urged by those 

 interests, which are supposed to have grown up in faith of the Act of 

 1825, and the Order in Council of 1826. Indeed, I distinctly under- 

 stood that these were insuperable obstacles to any relaxation in the 

 Colonial System of Great Britain, unless some previous change should 

 be made in the Legislation of The United States. 



With this understanding, though I by no means admitted the force 

 of these objections. I deemed it expedient, in this state of the Nego- 

 tiation, to make the following Proposition: 



That the Government of The United States should now comply 

 with the conditions of the Act of Parliament of July 5th, 1825, by 

 an express Law, opening their Ports for the admission of British 

 Vessels, and by allowing their entry, with the same kind of British 

 Colonial produce as may be imported in American Vessels, the Vessels 



