Benns: British West India Carrying-Trade 11 
ister plenipotentiary and sent as the first envoy to Great 
Britain. Early the next year he made known to the British 
Government that the United States was willing to throw wide 
open its ports to British ships and goods upon the reciprocal 
stipulation of Great Britain that her ports should be equally 
open to American ships, merchants, and produce.^® But the 
British were loath to conclude a treaty. Adams depicts them 
as saying: “To what end a treaty of commerce when we are 
sure of as much American trade as we have occasion for with- 
out it? There must be a quid pro quo — and what have the 
United States to give in exchange for the liberty of going 
in their own ships to our sugar colonies and our colonies 
upon the continent?” When they were reminded that “The 
Americans allow Britons to come in their own vessels to all 
their ports in the United States and this is more than a quid 
for your quo”, the Briton replied, “But you cannot avoid 
this; you have no government; you cannot agree to prohibit 
our ships and goods, or to lay duties on them.”^^ 
America wished full reciprocity; Great Britain desired the 
maintenance of her old, exclusive colonial system. “It was 
inherent in the general condition of world politics that Amer- 
ica should be seeking new things and Great Britain should 
be standing by the old.”^^ And Great Britain, having at 
that time the whip-hand, believing that her commerce would 
flourish without a treaty with the United States and without 
opening her West India or North American colonies, and be- 
ing actuated by a growing jealousy and fear that the new 
American States would develop as a maritime rival, changed 
the objective point of her policy from Europe to the new 
continent, and, from 1783 on, leveled it steadily at a repres- 
sion of the shipping of the American Republic. Practically 
the same policy which had been earlier pursued toward the 
Dutch was now initiated in regard to America.^® 
Adams perceived this attitude soon after arriving in Eng- 
land and wrote to Jefferson recommending that the United 
States should take retaliatory measures to meet the situation. 
The powers of the old Congress, under the Articles of Con- 
Lyman, Diplomacy of the U.S., 193. 
Works of John Adams, VIII, 383. 
^Uhid., VIII, 274, 275. 
Dunning-, British Empire and the U.S., 39. 
10 Works of John Adams, VIII, 291, 353. Hall, Am. Navigation. 25, 
-0 Works of John Adams, VIII, 292. 
