Benns: British West India Carrying-Trade 55 
plenipotentiaries to force Great Britain to grant reciprocity 
in the colonial trade.'^ 
The negotiations opened somewhat inauspiciously for the 
United States. Albert Gallatin and Richard Rush were 
authorized jointly as plenipotentiaries to conclude the new 
treaty, with the understanding that Gallatin should be sum- 
moned from Paris as soon as Rush had ascertained the serious 
intention of Great Britain to negotiate.® In the course of the 
opening conversations which Rush held with Lord Castlereagh, 
the former, perhaps necessarily, allowed the British Govern- 
ment to learn that the American plenipotentiaries were author- 
ized to renew the Convention of 1815 whether or not 
negotiation was opened on any other point."^ As a result, there- 
fore, the American plenipotentiaries were deprived of what- 
ever advantage might have come to them from the implied 
threat of dropping the negotiations unless reciprocity was 
granted in the trade with the West Indies. 
Nevertheless, the British plenipotentiaries in the opening 
negotiations did agree to a perfect reciprocity and equality 
in the trade with the British West Indies on the basis which 
the American plenipotentiaries brought forward, and which 
embraced the following objects: 
1. British vessels to be permitted to import from the British West 
Indies into the United States, and to export from the United States to 
the British West Indies, only such articles ... as American vessels 
should be permitted to export from and import into the British West 
Indies. 
2. The duties on the vessels and on the cargoes to be reciprocally 
the same whether the vessels were American or British. 
3. The duties on the importation of American produce into the 
British West Indies not to be higher when the produce was imported 
directly from the United States than when imported in a circuitous man- 
ner; with a reciprocal condition for the importation of West India 
produce into the United States. 
4. The intercourse in British vessels to be allowed only with such 
West India ports as would be opened to the American vessels. 
5. The British vessels allowed to carry on that trade to be only of 
the same description with [as] the American vessels admitted in the 
British West Indies.® 
The very fact that the British plenipotentiaries were willing 
to accept such proposals as a working basis for negotiation 
® Writings of James Madison, VIII, 415. 
® Writings of Gallatin, II, 62. 
Ubid., II, 86. 
^ Am. State Papers, For. Rel., IV, 881, 382. 
