Benns: British West India Carrying-Trade 77 
the sacrifices which the South had been led to embark upon in 
a spirit of nationalism began to appear to no purpose. Great 
Britain, it was contended, was not likely to be coerced into an 
abandonment of her favorite system; there was no ground 
for such a hope.^^ Indeed it was even questioned whether 
every nation has not in view of her ‘'clear right to regulate the 
trade of foreign vessels with her own soil, . . . the same 
right to regulate the trade of foreign vessels with her colonies, 
which are indeed only parts of her own soil”.®^ 
Perhaps it was only natural that this state of mind in the 
South should first be expressed in the form of protest by Nor- 
folk. It was Norfolk which had witnessed “with feeling of 
regreP’ the final departure of British ships from her harbor 
after the act of 1818.^" It was Norfolk which had experienced 
a decline of her exports from $2,699,111 for the year 
1818 to only $298,684 for the first nine months of 1821.®^ 
Finally it was Norfolk which, reading of the 99 arrivals in 
her harbor from foreign ports for the year 1821, could recall 
the year 1803 with its 451 arrivals and the later year 1818 
when so many as 45 vessels arrived in sixty days.^® At any 
rate, it was in Norfolk that the mayor, recorder, aldermen, 
and common council on December 17, 1821, unanimously 
adopted resolutions that the American navigation acts were 
highly injurious to the interests of Norfolk and contrary to 
the true policy of the United States, and recommended that a 
public meeting be held at the town hall to adopt measures to 
insure their repeal. Four days later such a public meeting 
was held at which a memorial was drawn up to be transmitted 
to Congress.^® 
The movement spread rapidly thru Virginia and the South 
so that, as one editor pointed out, the situation in 1822 was 
quite the reverse of what it had been a few years earlier when 
meetings against commercial restrictions had been held in the 
northern states and the southern had been quiescent.®^ During 
Baltimore Telegraph quoted in Neiv England Palladium and Commercial Advertiser, 
Dec. 18, 1821. Norfolk memorial, Ibid., Jan. 22, 1822. Memorial of citizens of Rich- 
mond in Connecticut Herald, Jan. 22, 1822. 
Norfolk memorial, Neiv England Palladium and Commercial Advertiser, Jan. 22, 
1822. 
Norfolk Herald quoted in Daily National Intelligencer, Oct. 7, 1818. 
Am. State Papers, Commerce and Navigation, II, 525. 
New England Palladium and Commercial Advertiser, June 9, 1818. Norfolk Beacon 
quoted in Newport Mercury, Feb. 2, 1822. 
®®Am. State Papers, Comm,erce and Navigation, II, 521-525. 
New England Palladium and Commercial Advertiser, Jan. 18, 1822. 
