Benns: British West India Carrying-Trade 107 
the prelude to an active anti-English, or at least Pan-Amer- 
ican, policy'’ on the part of the United States, and “at once 
entered into a contest with Adams for the leadership of Span- 
ish America".®^ The recognition of the leading Spanish 
American states by Great Britain was “decided upon partly 
in order to teach the new states to lean upon England, not 
upon the United States"/^^ And then, early in 1825, Canning 
had been still further disturbed by the invitation extended to 
the United States by the Spanish American powers to meet 
them in the Congress to be held at Panama.^^ Considering 
how the British interests, both commercial and political, were 
involved in all the changes which had occurred in the New 
World, especially in view of the political and maritime power 
of the United States in that hemisphere, the British Govern- 
ment decided that it had better look “to the means by which, 
in a race of fair and honorable rivalry and competition” be- 
tween their commerce and navigation and the commerce and 
navigation of the United States, “these great interests of the 
British Empire” were most likely to be maintained/^ 
Moved by these considerations. Parliament in the early 
summer of 1825 passed three new acts for the regulation of 
the British West India and North American colonial trade, 
these acts to take effect on January 5, 1826/^ The first, which 
was approved on June 27, 1825, contained twenty-one arti- 
cles, and was entitled “AN ACT for further regulating the 
trade of his Majesty's possessions in America and the West 
Indies, and for the warehousing of goods therein”. The chief 
provisions of this act were as follows/^ 
1. It opened the British free ports in America and the 
West Indies, except Newfoundland, not to the ships of foreign 
countries in America and the West Indies only, but to those 
of any foreign place in Europe, or in Asia within the Medi- 
terranean Sea, or in Africa. 
2. In place of the short enumerated list of articles previ- 
ously allowed to be imported into these free ports, it opened 
them to the importation of all goods, with a few exceptions. 
Fish, American Diplomacy, 214. 
Temperley, “The Later American Policy of George Canning” (Am. Hist. Rev., XI, 
794). 
Fish, American Diplomacy, 214. 
Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates (2d series), XII, 1104, 1105. 
■^3 Listed in Annual Register, 1825, LXVII, Appendix, 320. Published in full in Am. 
State Papers, For. Rel., VI, 301-323. 
Am. State Papers, For. Rel., VI, 301-306. 
