Benns: British West India Carrying-Trade 103 
that the intercourse should continue restricted to the direct voyage, as 
it then was by the respective laws of the parties. 
3. The point on which the parties could not then agree, was, that 
the United States insisted that American produce should be admitted 
into the British colonial ports upon the same terms as similar produce 
received from anywhere else; that is, either from a British possession or 
a foreign country.®® 
In view of this apparent deadlock it was finally decided 
that negotiations should be suspended for the time being, in 
order that some of the subjects which had been presented for 
discussion might be referred to the Government at Washing- 
ton. The general tone of the protocols indicates that a re- 
sumption of negotiations was expected later after the Amer- 
ican Government had considered the British proposals, but 
no definite agreement to this effect seems to have been made.®^ 
Once again the United States had failed to secure by diplomacy 
the modification of the British colonial system which it desired. 
But various influences and events were contributing to 
bring about a further modification of the system by Great 
Britain herself. The act of Parliament of 1822 had been 
passed, it will be recalled, not from any liberal desire to af- 
ford a wider field for the development of American shipping, 
but from a desire to afford greater convenience and relief to 
the British colonists in the West Indies. The opening of this 
intercourse to American vessels had not proved, however, so 
great a convenience or relief as had been anticipated by the 
British. From all the British colonies it was reported, for 
instance, that the American merchants, instead of taking in 
return for their produce, rum, molasses, and products of the 
West Indies, had ceased in some instances to afford this relief 
to the planters, and were demanding for their cargoes, specie, 
or bills upon England. This had been one of the very evils 
which the British act of 1822 had been designed to remedy. 
Its failure to do so gradually brought the desire on the part 
of the British to see whether other countries, dealing in sim- 
ilar cargoes, would not be satisfied to take in payment a part 
of the surplus products of the British colonies.®^ 
50 Clay to Gallatin, Nov. 11, 1826, Ibid., VI, 261, 262. 
VI, 243. 
Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates (2d series), XVII, 646. (This demand for pay- 
ment in specie may have been for several reasons. Specie was needed to pay the im- 
port duties in the British colonial ports ; it was needed in many cases to pay an export 
duty on cargoes taken from the colonial ports to the United States. Further it was 
convenient to secure specie in the British West Indies and then go in ballast to foreign 
West India islands there to take a cargo for the United States free of export duty.) 
