Benns: British West India Carrying-Trade 141 
ate adjourned, sine die.^^ As a consequence no legislative 
action was taken by Congress to meet the British order in 
council. 
In the course of the debates, the Administration had been 
roundly taken to task by various members of the Opposition. 
The President was accused of having prevented favorable 
action at the preceding session of Congress by his “inter- 
ference"’, and of having been actuated by an “overweening 
ambition to display his skill in controversy and polemics”.®® 
The difficulty which then existed was “wholly attributable to 
the Executive branch of the Government”.®® In fact the West 
India trade had been lost, not because Great Britain had been 
unwilling to treat with the United States 
upon the basis of a liberal reciprocity — but in consequence of the peculiar 
and extraordinary views entertained by our present Chief Magistrate; 
not merely during the last year, but through the whole ten years of a 
negotiation conducted under his special superintendence.®^ 
During this period he had huckstered for an unattainable ob- 
ject with the consequent result that he had lost the substance 
itself.®^ 
These attacks were carried over into the newspapers, which 
again reflected the cleavage between the Administration and 
Opposition editors. In general the Opposition papers com- 
mended the Senate for its stand, attributing the defeat of the 
bill in the House again to the influence of the President. On 
the other hand. Administration papers maintained that the 
Senate was actuated only by a “wish to embarrass the Execu- 
tive”, that the attitude of the House was the one which should 
have prevailed. A few excerpts from editorials of prominent 
papers of the day will clearly reveal this contrast in opinion. 
Said the New York Evening Post, a leader of the Opposition: 
The President, after having succeeded in defeating the Colonial bill 
in the House of Representatives after it had passed the Senate, has only 
now to issue his proclamation closing our ports against British vessels, 
in compliance with the wise recommendation of certain editors, to meet 
precisely the views of the British Government in issuing the Order in 
Council.®^ 
^^Ihid., Ill, 504-506, 1514, 1517, 1531. 
89 /bid.. Ill, 1516, 1519. 
99 /bid.. Ill, 1517. 
91 /bid., Ill, 1465. 
92 /bid.. Ill, 1516. 
^9 Quoted in National Journal, March 13, 1827. 
