42 
Indiana University Studies 
Rhode Island and Connecticut — took cognizance of the situa- 
tion in messages to their state legislatures.®^ President Madi- 
son himself felt called upon to include the matter in his annual 
message of December, 1816, when, after congratulating the 
country on the ‘‘general invigoration of industry” and “ex- 
tension” of commerce, he stated his regret that a depression 
was experienced by particular branches of American manufac- 
tures and by a portion of the shipping interests. The reason 
for the latter he explained. 
The depressed state of our navigation is to be ascribed in a mate- 
rial degree to its exclusion from the colonial ports of the nation most 
extensively connected with us in commerce, and from the indirect opera- 
tion of that exclusion. 
. . . The British Government enforcing new regulations which pro- 
hibit a trade between its colonies and the United States in American 
vessels, whilst they permit a trade in British vessels, the American nav- 
igation loses accordingly, and the loss is augmented by the advantage 
which is given to the British competition over the American in the nav- 
igation between our ports and British ports in Europe by the circuitous 
voyages enjoyed by the one and not enjoyed by the other. 
The President refrained, however, from recommending any 
prohibition of British West India trade in British vessels. It 
has been claimed that the reason for this omission was that 
he saw that the agriculturists, manufacturers, and merchants 
of the United States were not concerned as to the ships which 
were used in their exchanges. 
To deprive all the other classes of society ... of the benefit of 
a trade they then enjoyed merely because the navigating class could not 
participate in these benefits, . . . seemed to him a course of policy 
unjust in itself and little calculated to restore harmony to the dis- 
cordant parts of the United States, which had already manifested some 
estrangement to each other in consequence of the effects of the re- 
strictive system, and of the war.“ 
Possibly this may be true, for he certainly had admitted, some 
fourteen months earlier, that effectual counteracting regula- 
tions might be adopted by the United States, but considered 
the situation to be such as to dissuade from experiments which 
were not urgent.®^ 
The President’s attitude was, of course, unappreciated by 
those districts in which the shipping interests were prominent. 
^'^Connecticut Courant, July 2, 1816, and Oct. 15, 1816. 
Richardson, Messages and Papers, I, 574, 575. 
Tazewell, Review of Negotiations between U.S. and Great Britain, 36. 
07 y^ritings of Gallatin, I, 652. 
