Benns: British West India Carrying-Trade 69 
to have the “principles of justice and reciprocity” applied to 
the British West India trade had failed, recommended to the 
consideration of Congress in his annual message of 1819 
whether further prohibitory provisions in the laws relating 
to this trade might not be “expedient”. The Committee of 
Commerce and Manufactures in the Senate took the same gen- 
eral stand as the President, also recommending, in its general 
report in December, that further provisions should be adopted 
to carry the American navigation act to its full effect.®® 
During the conferences which were held by the committees 
to which the President’s recommendation had been referred, 
it developed that the Administration was inclined not only to 
prohibit the trade with the British colonies in America, but 
to prohibit the importation of articles the produce of those 
colonies even tho brought by American vessels from foreign 
ports. Others were inclined simply to a total prohibition of 
the trade, while still others were of the opinion that an option 
should be left to the British Government to open some free 
ports in the West Indies to American ships.®® 
Altho the House Committee was the first to introduce a bill 
on this subject, the bill which was finally adopted originated 
in the Senate where, once more. Senator Rufus King took 
the lead by introducing two resolutions. The purport of these 
resolutions was that the provisions of the act' of 1818 should 
be extended and applied to Bermuda, the Bahama Islands, 
and to all other colonies of Great Britain in the West Indies 
which were not then included; and, secondly, that no goods 
should be imported into the United States from New Bruns- 
wick, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, Bermuda, the Bahama 
Islands, or any place under Great Britain in the West Indies, 
“except such goods only as are truly of the growth, produce, 
or manufacture of the province, colony or place from which 
the same shall be directly imported into the United States”.®® 
These resolutions were referred to the Committee on Foreign 
Relations, four of whose five members were from Louisiana, 
Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia. After conferring with 
Adams, Crawford, and Rufus King, this committee reported a 
bill framed precisely on the King resolutions.®^ After some 
Richardson, Messages and Papers, II, 59, 60. 
Am. State Papers, Commerce and Navigation, II, 400. 
Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, IV, 495, 492, 504. 
Annals of Cong., 16 Cong., 1 Sess., I, 491. 
Ihid., I, 557, 586. Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, V, 39-42. 
