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Indiana University Studies 
ing of ships, with the result that in 1826, with greatly de- 
creased business to be cared for, there was an increased total 
tonnage available to care for it/^ The distressing situation 
in which the ship-owners found themselves was attributed to 
Huskisson’s liberal commercial system.^® Numerous petitions 
poured into Parliament, clamoring against the innovations 
which had been introduced.^^ 
In order to satisfy these clamors, to act as a sop to the 
British shipping interests, it seems quite possible that Huskis- 
son, with ample pretexts at hand, suddenly decided to exclude 
American shipping from entering the British colonies, while 
leaving them open to the ships of other less powerful com- 
petitors. This is the more easily believable because it ac- 
cords with Huskisson’s expressed idea of the chief purpose of 
the British navigation laws, namely, to maintain a great com- 
mercial marine for Great Britain and at the same time to 
prevent too great a share of the foreign carrying-trade from 
falling to any one particular country.^^ In other words, it is 
quite probable that, forced to meet a formidable opposition 
to his general ideas of reform, he was disposed to regain 
some popularity with the shipping interests by his action 
toward the United States.^^ 
That the British order in council was popular in Great 
Britain was quite apparent. The London Courier, speaking 
of it, said : 
The government of this country would have been fully justified in 
excluding American ships immediately, and without any more specific 
notice than that which the law itself had given, especially as that law, 
which passed in July, 1825, was not to take effect until January, 1826. 
From that period, our West India ports ought, in strictness, to have 
been closed against American vessels; . . . 
The interruption of this trade with the United States ... is, 
we conceive, a fortunate event for British shipping, which cannot but 
receive encouragement from the interruption of the trade now carried 
on in American bottoms, and with cargoes from the United States.^^ 
Blame for the order in council was thrown upon the United 
States by the London Traveller which claimed that the Brit- 
ish order only met “a jealous and illiberal policy on the part 
See table of navigation in Annual Register, LXIX, Appendix, 281. 
20 Stapleton, Political Life of Canning, III, 22, 23. Annual Register, LXVIII, 64. 
21 Ibid. 
-^Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates (2d series), XVII, 646. 
22 Gallatin to Clay, April 28, 1827, Diary of James Gallatin, 270. 
21 Quoted in Niles’ Register, XXXI, 79. 
