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Indiana University Studies 
the controversy therefore turned upon the question, whether we should 
first be starved into compliance, or they first be tired of the loss of a 
profitable trade. The victory was theirs, we yielded. . . . 
This was the view adopted by those newspapers of the 
United States which made any comment upon the outcome of 
the struggle. One New York editor believed that Great 
Britain's concession had been ^‘unquestionably extorted from 
her by the pressure of the severest distress upon her colo- 
nies''.^^® Another in Boston thought that the outcome had 
“admirably proved the wisdom of the system of policy 
adopted" by the United States in 1818 .^®^ Still a third in 
Washington exulted: 
We have gained our point. The deportment of our government in 
meeting the scare croiv policy of British monopoly, without shrinking 
from the honourable stand prescribed by the act of 1818, is a just cause 
of triumph to the friends of free trade; our firmness has driven a selfish 
commercial rival, after a long experiment, to dispense an act of justice 
to her suffering Colonies, highly profitable to our intercourse with 
them."=^* 
Nor was praise lacking for the author and chief advocate 
of the system of retaliation. A writer in the Albany Argus 
gives him his due. 
Our commercial policy has obtained a great triumph. Mr. King’s 
West India Restriction Bill at last produced that change in the policy of 
the British Government, which he always predicted that it would.^^® 
And Rufus King, looking back over the struggle which his bill 
had inaugurated in 1818 and which, as he had prophesied, had 
called for “firmness, prudence, temperance and wisdom", 
might well believe that its triumph had hastened the day of 
American dominion on the ocean. 
Stapleton, Political Life of George Canning, III, 14. 
Netv York American (for the country), May 1, 1822. 
Boston Patriot quoted in the Essex Register, Aug. 81, 1822. 
138 Washington Gazette quoted in St. Christopher Gazette; and Charibbean Courier, 
Nov. 8, 1822. 
Quoted in Maine Gazette, April 5, 1822. 
