Benns: British West India Carrying-Trade 47 
have cut off the profitable West India market for the farmer. 
In so far as British vessels were still permitted to export 
American products to the British West Indies, the act, as al- 
ready pointed out, was weak. The year 1817 thus witnessed 
at least a beginning in the American campaign of retaliation. 
What little comment did appear in the newspapers regard- 
ing the American Navigation Act was favorable. The Daily 
National Intelligencer characterized it as “probably the most 
important one act passed during the session’', and it was ex- 
pected by the Providence Gazette to “prove highly beneficial 
to the maritime interest of the country”.®® 
Whether these acts of the American Government — “notes 
of preparation”, they have been called®' — were destined to have 
any beneficial effect on American navigation could not be im- 
mediately known, but it was soon apparent that they did oper- 
ate to produce some slight and partial concessions on the part 
of the British Government. On March 18, 1817, even before 
the American minister had received information of the pass- 
age of the navigation act. Lord Castlereagh informed him 
that the British Government had received such information, 
and repeated his assurance that the latter considered it per- 
fectly proper and as giving no cause of complaint or dissatis- 
faction. At the same time, after repeated apologies for delay, 
he informed Adams that the British Government had at length 
come to a determination respecting the proposals which the 
latter had submitted some six months earlier. Altho the Brit- 
ish Government was not prepared to abandon its ancient colo- 
nial system, it was ready to make certain concessions to the 
United States in respect to its colonial trade. The next day 
Lord Castlereagh sent Adams a draft of four articles, without 
preliminary, conclusion, or comment, it being understood that 
they were to be made supplementary to the convention of 1815, 
and to be in force for the same period.®® 
The first article extended to American navigation the pro- 
visions of the British free port acts which until then had been 
confined to vessels of European nations. These authorized a 
trade in certain enumerated articles with certain enumerated 
ports of the British West Indies in vessels of one deck. Goods 
Ibid., March 18, 1817. Providence Gazette, March 29, 1817. 
“British Colonial and Navigation System” (Am. Quart. Rev., II, 298). 
Am. State Papeits, For. Rel., IV, 367, 368. Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, III, 
489, 490, 492. 
