CHAPTER IIL GREAT BRITAIN MAKES CONCESSIONS 
Altho the rigorous enforcement of the British colonial 
system at length drove the American Government to resort 
to retaliatory legislation, it was far from the purpose of the 
latter to shut the door entirely against further diplomatic ne- 
gotiation regarding the British West India trade. On the con- 
trary, almost immediately after the passage of the Navigation 
Act of 1818, and months before it was to go into operation, 
the American Government again held out to Great Britain 
“the hand of liberal reciprocity’'.^ The occasion was found 
in the approaching expiration of the commercial convention 
of 1815, which, by its own limitation, would cease to be ef- 
fective in July, 1819. In order, therefore, that there might 
be no interval during which the commerce between the United 
States and British European ports should not be regulated, 
the American minister in London, Richard Rush, was in- 
structed early in the summer of 1818 to propose a new nego- 
tiation.- 
This necessary renewal of negotiations regarding the gen- 
eral commercial intercourse of the two countries was seized 
by the American Government as another opportunity to at- 
tempt to extend the principles of commercial reciprocity to 
the trade between the United States and the British colonies 
in the West Indies and North America.^ Certain facts led 
Adams to believe that the British Government would receive 
such a proposal with more favor at this time than in former 
negotiations. In the first place. Lord Castlereagh had re- 
cently avowed a liberal commercial policy in Parliament; sec- 
ondly, this avowal had been received with approbation by that 
body; and thirdly, the recent passage of a free port act 
seemed to indicate a change of policy in regard to the colonial 
system on the part of the British cabinet. This change of 
policy, he hoped also, might be hastened still further by the 
American Navigation Act.^ Finally, there was, in addition, 
some expectation that a refusal to renew the commercial con- 
vention of 1815 might be used as a lever by the American 
1 Writings of John Quincy Adams, VI, 344. 
^ Richardson, Messages and Pavers, II, 37. 
3 Am. State Pavers, For. Rel., IV, 371. 
^Ihid., IV, 372. 
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