Benns: British West India Carrying-Trade 
9 
United States any goods whatsoever. And these imported or 
exported goods were to pay the same duties and charges only 
as similar goods, the property of British natural-born subjects 
and imported or exported in British-built ships navigated by 
British seamen. This bill would have removed at once a 
source of irritation which, on the contrary, remained active 
for approximately half a century.® For, unfortunately, not 
all the statesmen of Great Britain took this favorable attitude. 
‘There was a choice to be made between opposite ideas : one, 
leading to hearty conciliation and the establishment of rela- 
tions of true reciprocity; the other, removing further and 
further the distance between the kindred peoples, and confirm- 
ing the alienation which warfare had begun. The majority 
decided: and they preferred the latter.’’^ 
The opposition was aided in the formation of its opinion 
by a pamphlet which appeared in 1783, written by Lord Shef- 
field. The author maintained that the Americans, by assert- 
ing their independence, had renounced not only the duties 
but the privileges of British subjects. Their ships, therefore, 
should not be admitted into the British West Indies lest the 
navigation interests of the mother country should lose in com- 
petition with them. To quiet the fears of those who might 
have apprehensions of American retaliation, he explained that 
British manufactures were more necessary to the Americans 
than the products of the latter were to the British; that at 
least four-fifths of the importations from Europe into the 
American States were at all times made upon. credit; that 
the States were in greater need of credit at that time than at 
any former period; and finally, that credit could be obtained 
only in Great Britain. Further, the American States were 
not to be feared as a nation by Great Britain as they could 
not easily be brought to act together. No treaty with them 
was necessary.^® These ideas are said to have been furnished 
him by Silas Deane, a citizen of the United States, once high . 
in public favor, who was at that time in England, and who 
made known to Lord Sheffield the facts upon which the latter 
based his assertions. This pamphlet produced a decisive 
® Edwards, Hist, of the British West Indies, II, 493, 494, note. Works of John 
Adams, I, 421, 422. 
^ Works of John Adams, I, 421. 
Sheffield, Observations on the Commerce of the American States tvith Europe and 
the W. Indies, 2, 107, 109, 111, 112. 
“Am. Annual Register, 1826-27, pp. 42, 43. 
