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Indiana University Studies 
These, it was felt, were the only terms to which the United 
States could safely agree; at the same time, it was not ex- 
pected that they would be acceptable to the British Govern- 
ment.^® 
Consequently, early in May, 1819, Rush was authorized to 
agree to two additional articles which should be supplementary 
to the convention of 1818, and which dealt with the colonial 
trade. He was also instructed by Secretary of State Adams 
that he should 
candidly state to Lord Castlereagh that our ultimate object of partici- 
pating in the navigation of this necessary trade, having been explicitly 
avowed, must be steadily pursued; that we deem it more for our interest 
to leave it on the footing of reciprocal mutual regulation, than to bind 
ourselves by any compact, the result of which must be to disappoint us 
of that object; that we think the effect of the three articles declared to 
be inseparable by the British plenipotentiaries would be to deprive us 
even of the portion of the carrying which we have already secured by 
our existing laws, and which we believe we can further secure; and that 
it is far better for the harmony of the two nations to avoid any bargain 
in which either party, after agreeing to it, shall have, by experience of 
its effects, the sentiment of having been overreached brought home to 
its councils.^" 
The two articles transmitted to Rush dealt, the one with 
the British West India trade, the other with that to New 
Brunswick and Nova Scotia. They were supposed to be a 
compromise between the articles proposed by the plenipoten- 
tiaries of the two countries in the preceding negotiation, but 
the compromise leaned much more heavily toward the Amer- 
ican than toward the British proposals. In the first article, 
the United States conceded to Great Britain her point that 
the trade should be confined to a list of enumerated commodi- 
ties, but insisted on its own point that no higher duties should 
be levied on American goods, whether by the direct or indi- 
rect voyage, in British or American vessels, than on similar 
articles from any foreign country or any British colony. The 
second article incorporated the former American contention 
that the exports from the United States to Nova Scotia and 
New Brunswick should be limited to those articles which were 
admitted direct from the United States to the British West 
Indies, and that the imports from New Brunswick and Nova 
Scotia to the United States should be limited to the products 
29 Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, IV, 322, 323. 
29 Am. State Papers, For. Rel., IV, 403. 
