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Indiana University Studies 
colonial trade as was not incompatible with the public interest. 
This resolution being adopted, the House was thrown into an 
executive session to receive the confidential message of the 
President. While in executive session Cambreleng's bill was 
finally passed, substantially as drawn up, by a vote of 105 to 
28. It was thereupon transmitted to the Senate where it was 
also immediately passed.^- 
This act provided that whenever before the next session 
of Congress the President should receive satisfactory evidence 
that the British Government would open the ports of its coloni- 
al possessions in the West Indies, on the continent of South 
America, the Bahama Islands, the Caicos, and the Bermuda 
Islands to the vessels of the United States for an indefinite 
or a limited term on the basis of the British act of 1825, the 
President by his proclamation should open the ports of the 
United States indefinitely or for a fixed term, as the case might 
be, to British vessels coming from the said British possessions 
and their cargoes on the same terms as to American vessels 
and cargoes from the same ports. In addition, the American 
acts of 1818, 1820, and 1823 should thereupon be declared sus- 
pended or absolutely repealed as the case might require.^^ 
The President’s message was greeted with the most ex- 
treme ridicule by the Opposition press. Not only had it 
thrown the House of Representatives into secret session; it 
had thrown ‘The nation into a fit of laughter” as well.^^ When 
the next packet, “the packet by which it was intended to be 
sent”, arrived and no reply was received from the British 
Government, the air re-echoed with the accusations of hostile 
editors. The whole affair was characterized as a “ridiculous 
farce”, a “humbug”, a “hoax”, “mere moonshine”.^® Under 
the heading “Presidential Humbuggery”, the editor of the 
Portland Advertiser proclaimed that the message had turned 
out “to be a humbug which would make even a novice in poli- 
tics laugh”.^® Another maintained that the new law was “as 
harmless as the poor man’s will, — in which he bequeathed ‘to 
^-Register of Debates, VI, Pt. 2, 1137-1139. 
Public Statutes at Large, IV, 419, 420. 
Daily National Journal, June 15, 1830. 
‘^^Neiv England Palladium, June 4, 1830. Massachusetts Spy, June 9, 1830. Netv 
Hampshire Sentinel, June 18, 1830. Portsmouth Journal, June 19, 1830. Phenix Gazette, 
June 4, 1830. Nero York Commercial Advertiser in Phenix Gazette, June 4, 1830. 
Delaware Journal, .June 8, 1830, in Daily National Intelligencer, June 11, 1830. Daily 
National Journal, June 15, 1830. 
Portland Advertiser, June 8, 1830. 
