Benns: British West India Carrying-Trade 91 
in competition with British vessels employed in the same navi- 
gation were, he argued, such that the American restrictions 
were ‘'surely not more than sufficient''. These disadvantages 
were the restrictions attached to the British act of 1822 which 
have already been mentioned, such restrictions as admission 
to enumerated ports only, limitation to enumerated articles in 
the import trade, exclusion of fish and salted provisions, 
restriction to direct trade only between the United States 
and the colonial ports, necessity of payment before admission 
of duties which he considered in many cases “almost equiva- 
lent to prohibition", and the requirement under local muni- 
cipal laws of the payment of a duty on articles exported to 
the United States from some of the colonial ports.^^ These 
restrictions did not bind British vessels sailing from one part 
of the British empire to another, tho they did apply to British 
vessels engaged in trade between the United States and the 
British colonies. The competition which Adams had in mind 
was not that between American and British vessels sailing, 
for instance, from Boston to Kingston, Jamaica. The compe- 
tition which he feared was that between a British vessel sail- 
ing from St. Johns, New Brunswick, and an American vessel 
sailing from Portland, Maine, with similar cargoes. Here, 
naturally, the British ship possessed advantages over the 
American. 
In answer to Canning's second complaint Adams replied: 
The colonies of Great Britain in the West India Islands are, in re- 
spect to every object of commerce and navigation, as distinct from those 
in North America as any two nations are from each other. Separated 
by an ocean, and having scarcely a single article of commercial exchange 
in common, the productions of neither can, in the natural course of 
trade, be objects of export from the other. Instead, therefore, of ex- 
cluding from admission all the articles of the produce of both, with the 
exception of a small enumerated list, the proclamation has authorized 
the general admission from either of those articles of its own natural 
growth or produce, excluding only the admission from either of those 
articles which it never could export but in consequence of their having 
been before imported to it from abroad.^^ 
Thus, no concession was made to the complaints of Canning, 
the administration having agreed that this would not be ad- 
visable since Congress would meet within a month, and since 
it was “evident that the regulation of the intercourse with the 
“Am. State Papers, For. Rel., VI, 215, 216. 
^Ubid., VI, 216. 
