Benns: British West India Carrying-Trade 
13 
eral welfare of the United States as shown by the fact that 
it was productive of mutual inconvenience and injuries among 
the states themselves, and by the fact that the systems of 
several nations could not be consistently or effectually coun- 
teracted; secondly, that Congress be requested to devise such 
a system of commercial powers as they ought necessarily to 
be invested with, to be recommended to the States; and, 
finally, that Congress be assured of finding the most suitable 
disposition on the part of Pennsylvania to comply therewith. 
The action of these States, no doubt, had its effect; but 
so also did the fact that trade fell into the hands of foreign 
merchants, that American commerce itself was in a languish- 
ing state, and that the General Government acknowledged its 
inability to afford adequate protection to these great interests 
of the country. Influences such as these combined to give an 
impulse to the public mind which resulted finally in the adop- 
tion of the Federal Constitution. 
In view of the influences which brought about the consti- 
tutional movement, it is not surprising that the earliest peti- 
tions addressed to Congress and its earliest legislation related 
to commerce and shipping. In fact, the very first act passed 
at the first session of the First Congress, with the exception 
of a purely formal statute in reference to the taking of oaths, 
was an act imposing tonnage duties which discriminated 
against foreign-built and foreign-owned ships. The pro- 
posal was made by Madison, who thruout his speeches voiced 
his indignation at the hostile and contemptuous utterance of 
Great Britain towards the United States, and who avowed 
his own disposition to meet interdict with interdict ''until 
we should be allowed to carry to the West India Islands in 
our own vessels the produce of America, which necessity com- 
pels them to take”. There was even talk in the Senate of 
imposing an increased tonnage duty on all foreign ships that 
should load in the United States with American produce for 
any place in America to which American ships were not per- 
mitted to carry their own produce. This, it was argued, 
would be a means of placing the trade between the United 
24 “Brit, Colonial and Navigation System” {Am. Quart. Rev., II, 275). 
Am. Annual Register, 1826-27, p. 43. 
2« House Jour., 1 Cong., 1 Sess., 33, 50. Public Statutes at Large, I, 27, 28. Soley, 
“Maritime Industries of Am.” (in Shaler, The U.S. of Am., ’523, 524). 
2^ “Brit. Colonial and Navigation System” (Am. Quart. Rev., II, 279). 
