Benns: British West India Carrying-Trade 43 
Several papers censured him for his statements about the con- 
dition of commerce,®^ one of the most sarcastic editorials ap- 
pearing in the Aurora under the heading, “Extension of Com- 
merced^ : 
What do the facts say, what does the message itself say? Why, if it re- 
lates to the state of commerce before the war, the assertion is totally 
unfounded; if it relates to the period of the war, it is unfounded still; 
and the message itself furnishes evidence, in a sort of crocodile condo- 
lence over our exclusion from the ports in the West Indies. Before the 
war we had access there in vessels of limited tonnage ; during the war we 
fought our way thither; but now we are totally excluded, and under cir- 
cumstances which will appear not a little disreputable to the moral 
character of our government in the eyes of posterity. So that the 
extension of our commerce is to be resolved into a total exclusion from 
the West Indies. 
But let us see how this policy of our rulers is attempted to be soft- 
ened down. The message says, “t/ie depressed state of our navigation 
is to be ascribed in a material degree to its exclusion (meaning no doubt 
extension!) from the colonial ports of the nation most extensively con- 
nected with us, and from the indirect operation of that exclusion.” So 
that we see our navigation extended, nobody knows where or how, while 
we are informed that it is also depressed in a material degree: and we 
are told by a miserable circumlocution that this depression is by the 
total exclusion of our navigation from the colonies of a nation which no 
doubt delicacy forbid to be named, but which is designated under the 
general description of that ^‘nation most extensively connected with us”.®'’ 
This year public opinion in the United States was much 
more aroused than it had been during the previous session of 
Congress. At once demands began to appear that Congress, 
in justice to the ship-owners and ship-builders, should sup- 
ply by law what was deficient in the commercial convention 
of 1815, in order to establish a real reciprocity between the 
United States and Great Britain.^® A response to these de- 
mands was forthcoming from Congress almost immediately 
after its convening, when the Committee on Foreign Rela- 
tions in the House, on December 23, 1816, brought in a bill 
copied almost to the letter from the British navigation acts. 
It provided that no goods should be imported into the United 
States from any foreign port or place except in vessels of the 
United States or in such foreign vessels as truly and wholly 
^^New York Evening Post, Dec. 6, 1816. Federal Republican and Baltimore Tele- 
graph, Dec. 10, 1816. Aurora, Dec. 7, 1816. 
Aurora, Dec. 14, 1816. 
Life and Correspondence of Rufus King, VI, 42. Aurora, Dec. 9, 1816, and Dec. 
16, 1816. 
