150 CORRESPONDENCE, ETC., 



tents of which Note, therefore, the Undersigned will principally 

 confine his present observations. 



Of the character and effect of the recent Measure of the American 

 Congress, Mr. MacLane observes that " it concedes in its terms all 

 the power in the regulation of the Colonial trade, and authorizes the 

 President to confer on British Subjects all those privileges, as well 

 in the circuitous, as the direct voyage, which Great Britain has at 

 any time demanded or desired." 



In this declaration, the Undersigned is happy to observe the same 

 spirit and disposition which dictated Mr. LacLane's former Com- 

 munications, wherein he announced the readiness and desire of the 

 American Government " to comply with the conditions of the Act of 

 Parliament of 1825; " and also " that the claims advanced in justifica- 

 tion of the omission of The United States, to embrace the offers of 

 this Country, have been abandoned by those who urged them, and 

 have received no sanction from the People of The United States:" 

 and the Undersigned readily admits, that if the Bill, passed by the 

 American Legislature, be well calculated, practically, to fulfil the ex- 

 pressed intentions of its Framers, it must have the effect of removing 

 all those grounds of difference between the two Governments, with 

 relation to the trade between The United States and the British 

 Colonies, which have been the subject of so much discussion, and 

 which have constituted the main cause of the suspension of the inter- 

 course, by those restrictive Acts of The United States, which the 

 American Government is now prepared to repeal. 



The Proposition now made by Mr. MacLane, for the revocation of 

 the Order in Council of 1826, stands upon a ground materially dif- 

 ferent from that on which the same question was brought forward, in 

 the Notes of Mr. Gallatin, in 1827, and even in the more explanatory 

 Overtures of Mr. MacLane, contained in his Communications of De- 

 cember, 1829, and March, 1830. 



Those several Proposals were all of them invitations to the British 

 Government to pledge itself, hypothetically, to the revocation of the 

 Order in Council, in the ervent or a repeal of those Acts of the Ameri- 

 can Congress, which gave occasion to it. His Majesty's Government 

 declined to give that prospective pledge or assurance, on the grounds 

 stated in Lord Dudley's Note of the 1st of October, 1827. But the 

 objections then urged are not applicable to the present Overture; pro- 

 vision has now been made by an Act of the American Legislature, 

 for the re-establishment of the suspended intercourse, upon certain 

 terms and conditions; and that Act being now before His Majesty's 

 Government, it is for them to decide whether they are prepared to 

 adopt a corresponding Measure on the part of Great Britain for that 

 object. 



The Undersigned is ready to admit that, in spirit and in substance 

 the Bill, transmitted by Mr. MacLane, is conformable to the view 

 which he takes of it, in the expressions before quoted from his Note 

 of the 12th of July, and that it is, therefore, calculated to afford to 

 Great Britain complete satisfaction on the several points which have 

 been heretofore in dispute between the two Countries. He has also 

 received, with much satisfaction, the explanation which Mr. MacLane 

 has afforded him, verbally, in the last Conference which the Under- 

 signed had the honour of holding with him, upon those passages in 

 which the wording of the Bill appears obscure, and in which it 



