Benns: British West India Carrying-Trade 23 
by four hundred very respectable inhabitants who, at a meet- 
ing in the same city, asserted that the trade with the United 
States was indispensable.®^ 
These proclamations received some attention in the United 
States also. Jacob Crowinshield, a Congressman from Massa- 
chusetts, spoke against them and introduced a resolution in- 
structing the Committee of Commerce and Manufactures, 
among other things, to inquire into the expediency of prohibit- 
ing the exportation from the United States of all goods in 
foreign, ships bound to any port with which the vessels of the 
United States were not allowed communication or where a free 
and unrestricted trade was not permitted in American produc- 
tions.®® Secretary of State Madison ascribed the regulations 
partly to the attachment of the British administration at that 
time to the colonial and navigation system, and partly to the 
interested representatives of certain merchants and others re- 
siding in the British provinces in North America. He felt 
that the United States, by asserting the principle of a reason- 
able reciprocity, might reduce the British Government at once 
to the dilemma of relaxing her regulations or of sacrificing 
her colonies.®^ 
However this might be, the British Government, by an act 
of Parliament of June 27, 1805, opened its West India Islands 
to the productions of all colonies or countries in America “be- 
longing to or under the dominion of any foreign European 
sovereign or state'', in any foreign single-decked vessel owned 
and navigated by persons inhabiting any of those said colonies 
or countries in America.®® Once more the British navigation 
interests had prevailed in their efforts to curtail American 
shipping in the British West Indies, this time by extending to 
other countries in America the privileges denied to the United 
States. 
The treaty of 1794, so far as it related to commerce, had 
expired on the first of October, 1803, and since that time no 
agreements had been reached by the two countries in regard 
to commercial matters.®® Consequently on April 19, 1806, 
President Jefferson nominated James Monroe, then American 
minister at the Court of London, and William Pinkney of 
Gardner, Hist, of Jamaica, 241, 242. Bridges, Annals of Jamaica, II, 271, 272. 
Benton, Abridgements of the Debates in Congress, III, 314. 
Am. State Papers, For. Rel., Ill, 101. 
^«Niles^ Register, XIV, 312. Am. State Papers, For. Rel., IV, 409, 410. 
Am. State Papers, For. Rel., Ill, 90. 
