148 
Indiana University Studies 
In fact Canning’s last note regarding this subject, dated 
January 27, 1827, was more curt and uncompromising than his 
first. One or two excerpts reveal his attitude. Speaking of 
the belief of the American Government that, even after the 
enactment of the British act of July, 1825, the question was 
still open to negotiation, he said : 
The undersigned is at a loss to understand on what ground it was 
assumed at Washington that there would be at all times an unabated 
disposition on the part of the British Government to make the trade of 
the West India colonies the subject of diplomatic arrangement. 
The circumstances of the case were entirely changed. 
Repeated negotiation had failed to produce any material approxi- 
mation of opinions upon that subject. 
The last attempt at an adjustment had been made with an evident 
conviction on both sides that there existed between them an unconquer- 
able difference of principle, and that it was by that difference, rather 
than by any decided irreconcilableness of interests, that a satisfactory 
arrangement was rendered hopeless. 
The nature of that difference has been sufficiently discussed . . 
Again, touching on the question of a further discussion of the 
situation, he said : 
The undersigned believes that he has now touched on every topic in 
the last note addressed to him by Mr. Gallatin to which he has not had 
occasion to advert in former stages of their correspondence. 
He will not allow himself to be drawn again into a discussion of 
topics already more than sufficiently debated.^"^ 
The spirit of this note left but one course open to Gallatin 
— to drop the discussion. Canning himself was reported to 
have raised a laugh in Parliament by saying that he consid- 
ered the correspondence as final since he had the “last 
word”.^-^ Altho he explained in a private note to Gallatin 
that he had merely stated that it was his “interest” to hope so, 
as, at present he had the last word, the spirit was practically 
the same.^"® The correspondence was therefore dropped. 
The Government at Washington, however, did not wish to 
have the question dropped with the United States excluded 
from trade with all the British colonies except those in North 
America. Influenced, perhaps, by the attacks on the Admin- 
istration which were constantly appearing in the press, by the 
hope expressed that .the question might yet be adjusted by 
State Papers, For. ReL, VI, 970. 
127 Ibid. 
Niles’ Register, XXXII, 181. 
129 Senate Docs., 22 Cong., 1 Sess., Ill, No. 132, p. 18. 
