58 
Indiana University Studies 
prevent Great Britain from laying higher duties on that produce than on 
similar articles the produce of other foreign countries, was nugatory, 
and . , . perfectly useless. There was ... no competition but 
with the produce of the British possessions. 
The American plenipotentiaries maintained, therefore, that 
some concession should be extended to the United States in 
competition with the British North American products in 
order to compensate the former for the restriction whereby 
it undertook to lay no higher duties on the colonial produce 
of the British possessions than on that of other countries.^® 
The American plenipotentiaries finally suggested that a maxi- 
mum of duties intended for the protection of the produce of 
the British dominions might be agreed on, but without suc- 
cess. In regard to the first two contentions advanced by 
the British, the American plenipotentiaries argued that : 
The propriety of limiting the number of articles to be carried di- 
rectly, would in a great measure depend on the list which might be pro- 
posed. To extend it to other articles, in the circuitous intercourse 
through Halifax and Bermuda, would give to the British the exclusive 
carriage of those articles from those ports to the West Indies, and vice 
versa, and be inconsistent with the avowed object of the United States 
— that of an equal participation in the navigation necessary for the 
transportation of the articles of which their trade with the West Indies, 
as allowed by Great Britain, actually consisted.^^ 
The American plenipotentiaries apparently were deter- 
mined to secure complete reciprocity and equality in the Brit- 
ish West India trade, a reciprocity which should prove to be 
actually equal in practice and not merely on paper. In at- 
tempting to secure this sort of reciprocity, they no doubt ap- 
peared unreasonable to the British Government in their de- 
mands. Possibly they felt that the new-born sense of nation- 
ality with which at that time every American citizen was 
embued would not tolerate from them anything short of the 
fullest assertion of the national pride.^® 
It soon became quite evident that it was altogether im- 
probable that the plenipotentiaries of the two countries could 
come to any definite agreement regarding the British West 
India trade, and it was therefore decided that the British 
plenipotentiaries should offer an article with the intention of 
Am. State Papers, For. ReL, IV, 382. 
“ Ibid. 
Ibid. 
1'’' Adams, Life of Albert Gallatin, 571. 
