Benns: British West India Carrying-Trade 57 
produce of her own empire against similar produce of the 
United States. It was likewise a demand that the United 
States be permitted to secure British West India produce upon 
the same terms as the different parts of the British posses- 
sions themselves. This was certainly more than the United 
States had a legal right to demand. The latter provision con- 
tained a demand which might be made with more reason, 
namely, that the British North American provinces should 
not be made entrepots for a trade in articles prohibited in the 
direct trade between the United States and the British colonies 
in the West Indies. 
Altho the British plenipotentiaries were willing to admit the 
principle of reciprocity ; to make no exception with respect to 
the description of vessels ; to admit that American vessels em- 
ployed in the trade might touch at more than one colonial port 
on the same voyage; and even to add naval stores, shingles, 
staves, and a more general description of provisions to the list 
of articles, as proposed by Lord Castlereagh in 1817 ; they 
stated immediately that the American proposals, as formally 
drawn up, were inadmissible and amounted to a much greater 
departure from the colonial policy of Great Britain than she 
was prepared to make. They did not enter into any abstract 
defense of that policy but urged the impossibility of breaking 
down at once a system still favored by English public opinion, 
and strongly supported by those interested in the fish and lum- 
ber of the North American colonies, the salted provisions and 
flour of Ireland, the shipping of Great Britain, as well as by 
the West India planters who lived in London. The British 
plenipotentiaries contended (1) that the United States ought, 
for the present, to be satisfied with an arrangement which 
would admit a considerable number of articles to be carried 
directly; (2) that they should not insist on the exclusion, in 
che indirect trade, of the articles which might not be included 
in the list of those admitted in the direct trade with the West 
Indies; and (3) that they ought not to object to the natural 
right of Great Britain to lay protecting duties in favor of the 
produce of her own possessions. 
In reply to the third contention the American plenipoten- 
tiaries maintained that, as 
no other foreign country could supply the West Indies with the articles 
which were the produce of the United States, a condition which would 
12 Ibid., IV. 382. 
