Benns: British West India Carrying-Trade 105 
of important service to Britain against a rival possessed of 
naval strength” 
Which of those powers is aspiring to raise a commercial marine, to pre- 
ponderate over that of Great Britain? Which of those states is, year 
by year, augmenting its military marine, by building ships of war of 
the largest class? Which of those powers possesses a formidable navy, 
and is looking forward to the time when it expects to wrest from this 
country its sway upon the ocean ?^® 
There was but one answer, and eventually it led to the conclu- 
sion that it would be expedient to permit the same latitude of 
trade to the ships of other countries which was then allowed 
to those of the United States.®® 
Added impetus was given to this incipient desire of Great 
Britain to open the West India trade to other nations, by the 
unjustifiable claim advanced by the American Government to 
have its goods admitted into the British West Indies on pre- 
cisely the same terms as British goods. This, as has already 
been pointed out, was considered in Great Britain as “a pre- 
tension unheard of in the commercial relation of independent 
states”.®^ And the British Ministry believed that : 
Whatever may have been the arguments used to induce the Ameri- 
can Congress to adopt this course, their real reason for making the 
attempt was . . . an impression on their part, that we had yielded 
this intercourse to necessity, and, that, as our colonies could not subsist 
without it, they might prescribe the conditions under which it should 
be carried on.®^ 
This situation was not to the liking of the British Government. 
As a contemporary British writer phrased it, 
although a ready source of supply is a convenience to a buyer, nothing 
is more offensive to him, than the arrogance of a seller, excited by a 
confidence in the absence of competition. When a seller attaches to the 
liberty of purchase other conditions than payment, it is time for the 
buyer to look about him in quest of other sources of supply.®® 
The British Government was urged on in this quest of some 
other sources of supply for the West Indies by the belief that 
it was not prudent that these colonies should depend upon the 
good-will of any one power for articles of first necessity, nor 
Quoted from speech of Earl of Liverpool in House of Lords, in New York Amer- 
ican dor the country), Aug. 12, 1825. 
Huskisson in Hansard's Parliamentary Debates (2d series), XVII, 646, 647. 
Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates (2d series), XII, 1107. 
^Ibid., XII, 1106. 
62 Ibid. 
62 Stapleton, Political Life of Canning, III, 71. 
