Benns: British West India Carrying-Trade 51 
cution. They therefore reported a bill to that effect, to be 
supplementary to the ‘^Act regulating duties on imports and 
tonnage'', passed April 27, 1816.®® 
The Senate Committee went a step further in its recom- 
mendation^ reporting a navigation bill which was substantially 
the same as the non-intercourse bill laid aside by the House 
in the preceding session.®^ The principal advocates of the 
measure in the Senate where practically all the debate took 
place were Senator Barbour of Virginia and Senator Rufus 
King of New York, the latter staking all his hopes of success 
on the measure which in principle he believed to be incom- 
parably the most important law ever passed on this or perhaps 
any subject.®^ 
The theory upon which the bill was based was that the 
United States was practically independent of the British West 
Indies for the products which the latter produced, but that 
these colonies were almost entirely dependent upon the United 
States for such necessities as provisions and lumber. The 
result of depriving them of these articles, it was argued, would 
be that Great Britain would recede from her strict adherence 
to her colonial system, or allow an entrepot to be established 
in some of the foreign West Indies, in either of which cases 
American vessels would gain a large part in the trade.®® In 
the consideration of this measure the prevalence of national 
feeling over the partial and sectional interests and prejudices 
which had hitherto prevented such action was shown. ^®® No 
doubt the decline in American tonnage for the preceding year 
was partly responsible for this change. Then, too, the time 
was deemed particularly fit for the adoption of such a measure 
inasmuch as the commercial convention of 1815 would termi- 
nate in July, 1819, when the commercial intercourse must 
again be established either by treaty or by mutual systems of 
legislative regulations.^®^ Other nations were also moving to 
abridge the advantages of the British monopoly, and their 
cooperation, it was felt, would increase the probability of suc- 
cess.^®^ 
Am. State Papers, For. ReL, V, 1, 2. 
^’’Annals of Cong., 15 Cong., 1 Sess., 307. 
Liife and Correspondence of Rufus King, VI, 143. 
Annals of Cong., 15 Cong., 1 Sess., 318-323. 
100 ^f'ritings of John Quincy Adams, VI, 341. 
Speech of Senator Barbour, Annals of Cong., 15 Cong., 1 Sess., 323. 
^”2 Life and Correspondence of Rufus King, VI, 138. 
