COMMERCIAL AGREEMENT OF 1830. 151 



seems, at least, doubtful whether the practical construction of it would 

 fully correspond with the intentions of the American Government, 

 as expressed by Mr. MacLane: but it is nevertheless necessary, in 

 order to remove all possibility of future misapprehension upon so 

 important a subject, that he should recapitulate the points upon which 

 those doubts have arisen, and distinctly state the sense in which the 

 Undersigned considers Mr. MacLane as concurring with him in the 

 interpretation of them. 



The first point in which a question might arise, is in that passage 

 of the Bill, wherein it is declared as one of the conditions on which 

 the restrictions now imposed by The United States may be removed, 

 " that the Vessels of The United States, and their Cargoes, on enter- 

 ing the Ports of the British Possessions as aforesaid," (viz. : in the 

 West Indies, on the Continent of America, the Bahama Islands, the 

 Caicos, and the Bermuda, or Somer Islands) " shall not be subject 

 to other or higher Duties of Tonnage or Impost, or Charges of any 

 other description, than would be imposed on British Vessels, or their 

 Cargoes, arriving in the said Colonial Possessions from the United 

 States of America." It is not quite clear whether the concluding 

 words, " from The United States of America," are meant to apply 

 to the Vessels of The United States and their Cargoes, in the first 

 part of the paragraph, as well as to those of Great Britain, or her 

 Colonies, in the latter part. 



It can scarcely, indeed, have been intended, that this Stipulation 

 should extend to American Vessels coming with Cargoes from any 

 other Places than The United States, because it is well known, that, 

 under the Navigation Laws of Great Britain, no Foreign Vessel 

 could bring a Cargo to any British Colonial Port from any other 

 Country than its own. 



The next condition expressed in the Act is, " that the Vessels of 

 The United States may import into the said Colonial Possessions, 

 from The United States, any article or articles which could be im- 

 ported in a British Vessel into the said Possessions from the United 

 States." 



In this passage it is not made sufficiently clear, that the articles to 

 be imported, on equal terms, by British or American Vessels, from 

 The United States, must be the produce of The United States. The 

 Undersigned however, cannot but suppose that such a limitation must 

 have been contemplated because the Clause of the Navigation Act, 

 already adverted to, whereby an American Vessel would be pre- 

 cluded from bringing any article, not the produce of America, to a 

 British Colonial Port, is not only a subject of universal notoriety, 

 but the same provision is distinctly made in the Act of Parliament of 

 1825, which has been so often referred to in the discussions on this 

 subject. 



It was also necessary that the Undersigned should ask for some ex- 

 planation of that Section of the Bill which has reference to the entry 

 of Vessels into the Ports of The United States from the Continental 

 Colonies of Great Britain in North America. These are not placed, 

 in the terms of the Act, on the same footing as those Ships coming 

 from the Colonies of the West Indies. 



With respect to the latter, the express provision made for the direct 

 intercourse with those Colonies, together with the simultaneous re- 

 peal of the several American Acts, which interdict at present the car- 



