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Indiana University Studies 
vessels of the United States, relate to points of vital interest to the 
Northern Colonies, and which, if conceded to the extent desired by the 
Memorialists must necessarily effect the destruction of our limited trade; 
it is therefore of the utmost consequence that the fullest representations 
should be made without delay to his Majesty’s Ministers. . . . 
A committee of the merchants of Halifax made a similar 
recommendation, and the Chamber of Commerce of St. Johns 
transmitted a memorial to Parliament to the same effect.^® 
Halifax papers teemed with articles in favor of the restrictive 
system existing between the United States and the British 
colonies.*^ 
But if there was some slight feeling of sectionalism within 
the British empire over this question, there was even more 
displayed within the United States. It has already been 
pointed out that there was a slight indication of this feeling 
as early as 1819 in Norfolk. By 1820 it had spread to Rich- 
mond.*® By the opening of the year 1822 it had spread thru 
most of the South. 
Altho it was known in the United States that the American 
navigation acts were having some evil effects in the British 
West Indies, it was felt by many, especially in the South, that 
the injuries suffered in the United States were “not much, if 
any, less than those suffered by the colonies”.*^ It was pointed 
out, also, that this suffering was not equally distributed thru- 
out the United States, that it fell most unequally and injuri- 
ously upon four or five of them. The agriculture of Maryland, 
Virginia, and North Carolina, the lumber of the two Carolinas 
and Georgia, it was felt in the South, were being almost ex- 
clusively taxed “to maintain a commercial experiment which 
it is supposed may redound to the benefit of all the nation’". 
“Farmers, merchants, dealers in timber and lumber, in fact 
all classes of citizens” were being deprived in a great measure 
of their former resources.^® And, not knowing of the agita- 
tion which was just beginning in the British West Indies to 
compel Great Britain to recede from her restrictive system, 
St. Christopher Advertiser, April 23, 1822. 
Providence Gazette, March 13, 1822. St. Christopher Gazette; and Charibbean 
Courier, June 7, 1822. 
^'‘Columbian Centinel, March 9, 1822. 
See above, pp. 59, 60, 71. 
Writer in Baltimore Telegraph, quoted in New England Palladium and Commer- 
cial Advertiser, Dec. 18, 1821. 
Memorial of citizens of Norfolk in Neto England Palladium and Commercial Ad- 
vertiser, Jan. 22, 1822. Editorial quoted from Charleston Mercury, in Neiv England 
Palladium and Commercial Advertiser, Jan. 29, 1822. 
