Benns: British West India Carrying-Trade 171 
Will Mr. Van Buren think of these suggestions and see me early on 
Monday to confer upon this subject?®^ 
But at that very moment, a note was on its way from McLane 
with an explanation of the situation in London. 
McLane knew that Jackson wanted a final decision by the 
British Government one way or the other before Congress ad- 
journed.^2 Consequently, after waiting three months for some 
reply from the British Government, he had determined to 
make another attempt to obtain a decision. This time he 
started out with a firm tone, announcing that 
whatever be the disposition which His Majesty’s Government may now 
be pleased to make of this subject, it must necessarily be final, and 
indicative of the policy to which it will be necessary in future, to adopt 
the commercial relations of each country.®* 
This he followed up with the suggestive information that 
when the United States shall think they have grounds to consider them- 
selves singled out from all other nations and made the exclusive object 
of an injurious regulation; when they shall imagine it levelled at their 
prosperity alone, either in retaliation for past deeds, or for interested 
purposes — to secure some adventitious advantage, or to encourage a 
hostile competition, by means of commercial monopoly; however justifi- 
able in that case, they may admit the regulation to be, in point of strict 
right, they will hardly be able to refrain, not merely from complaint, 
but from a course of measures calculated to avert the intended injury, 
though pregnant, perhaps, with consequences to be ultimately lamented.®"* 
Having announced this positive attitude for the future, 
he next laid down the premise that any departure from the 
rigid colonial system must be founded in the interests of the 
colonies themselves. From this premise he launched out upon 
a long and detailed statement explaining why it was for the 
good of the British colonies in the West Indies that the United 
States should again be admitted to a direct trade with them. 
On the other hand, as for any harm which might come to the 
British colonies in North America from such a course, the 
United States did not propose, he said, to expose them without 
a protection to a competition with American productions. On 
the contrary, it supposed that a fair preference was already 
secured to them in the West India market by the scale of duties 
prescribed by the act of 1825 and to which the United States 
Quoted from a Jackson MS., in Bassett, Life of Andrew Jackson, II, 661, 662. 
Senate Docs., 21 Cong., 2 Sess., I, No. 20, p. 19. 
33 /bid., 20. 
34 /bid., 21. ' 
