64 
Indiana University Studies 
than friendly and frank. The United States might resort to 
any just and rightful regulations of its own to meet those 
which Great Britain deemed it necessary to adhere to in re- 
gard to her West India Islands; they would form no ground 
of complaint whatever on the part of the British Govern- 
ment.^^ 
American diplomacy, having failed to budge Great Britain 
from her “tenacious, nay obstinate, adherence ... to her 
colonial system”,^^ the United States must seek some other 
means to this end. Obviously, looking back at the concessions 
which the British Government had just been willing to grant, 
the American navigation act had had some effect. Perhaps 
more of the same treatment would produce even greater effect. 
Certainly there were those among American political leaders 
who held this view, who had held it for some time.^® The 
Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, it will be recalled, 
had been of this opinion early in 1819.®^ 
The navigation act, from the American viewpoint, cer- 
tainly had had one good effect. It had destroyed the profit- 
able triangular commercial route which had formerly been 
monopolized by British shipping. British tonnage entering 
American ports had fallen from 174,935 tons in 1817 to only 
36,333 tons in 1819.^® The American consul at Liverpool re- 
ported that nearly all the direct trade between the United 
States and England had come to be carried in American ves- 
sels.^® But it had failed, to a great extent at least, to pre- 
vent American goods from getting to the West India planters, 
and it was this privation which, it had been hoped, would in- 
directly compel the British Government to recede from its 
long-held colonial system. 
The failure of the American navigation act to accomplish 
all that had been planned for it was due to the fact that it 
had been considerably neutralized by British regulations. At 
the very outset, Bermuda was excluded from its operation 
because it was a free port and thus open to American ships.^® 
Avi. State Papers, For. Rel., IV, 406. 
Quoted from Ee'fs Philadelphia Gazette in the New York Evening Post, May 5, 
1820. 
Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, IV, 323, 492. Life and Correspondence of Rufus 
King, VI, 159. 
3" Reports of Com. on For. Rel., VIII, 28. 
33 Bates, American Navigation, 183. 
30 Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, V, 41. 
New York Evening Post, July 3, 1818. 
