Benns: British West India Carrying-Trade 93 
articles, such as rum, for which they could find no other market, as they 
excluded our salted fish and provision. 
He said he was sure that was what I was coming to, and again inti- 
mated the threat of closing the ports again, which I again told him 
they were quite free to do, and no doubt would do, if they found it for 
their interest. We knew that had been their motive for opening the 
ports. He said we supposed they had been compelled by our restrictive 
measures to open the ports, but he believed we were in that mistaken. 
I said that we did not attribute it altogether to that. We ascribed much 
to the independence of the South American provinces, under which it 
was impossible that the old exclusive and excluding colonial system 
should much longer endure anywhere.^^ ^ 
In the correspondence and conferences, which continued 
thruout the following session of Congress, Canning repeatedly 
pressed the claim for admission of British vessels from the 
colonies, free from all discriminating duties and charges. He 
communicated copies of documents from collectors of customs 
at Kingston, Jamaica; Halifax, Nova Scotia; and Basseterre, 
St. Christopher, certifying that British and American vessels 
paid the same fees, or that by the act of Parliament they paid 
the same duties, or that they paid the same custom-house ex- 
penses.^® But according to Adams, who makes a point of the 
fact. Canning never pledged himself or his Government to 
‘'any declaration that there were no discriminating duties in 
the enumerated ports”. Adams claimed that the act of Parlia- 
ment did not abolish any discriminating or countervailing 
duties which existed in the British colonies to the disadvantage 
of the United States prior to the British act, that in fact there 
were local regulations which did so discriminate, and that 
they still continued to operate to the disadvantage of the 
United States. He seemed to be able to cite but one instance 
of such discrimination, however; namely, that an American 
vessel, which had entered a colonial port from the United 
States, was compelled to return directly to an American port, 
and to pay a heavy export duty upon any cargo which she 
might take on the return voyage, while a British vessel, enter- 
ing the same colonial port, also from the United States, was 
not compelled to return to the United States but had the world 
before her for her subsequent voyage, and paid no export duty 
upon the cargo which she took to any other British colonial 
port or to Great Britain. This discrimination, he maintained. 
Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, VI, 104. 
Am. State Papers, For. Rel., VI, 217-220, 227. 
